Though "it has not been a usual place for mental health services," a team of Oregon scholars and public-health officials sees the public school fast becoming a place where professionals must deal with "growing populations of children" struggling with "mental and emotional disorders, and social risk."
Writing in the pages of the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, the Oregon scholars and government officials express deep concern over the way that "the numbers of school children diagnosed with or at high risk for mental and emotional disorders are increasing," and they characterize as "alarming" the numbers of public-school children "at risk for negative socioemotional outcomes." The Oregon investigators note that nearly 21% of children between the ages of 9 and 17 now manifest symptoms of "a diagnosable mental or addictive disorder" and that as many as 9 million more school-age children are believed to be experiencing "serious emotional disturbances without receiving the help they need." "These mental health problems," remark the authors of the recent article, "seriously impede students' ability to acquire academic skills and social competence."
In explaining the rising tide of psychological distress among school children, the Oregon officials focus on "stressful family environments," environments that make children "four times as likely to have high levels of behavioral and emotional problems." Where do the Oregon scholars find the "stressful family environments" that foster emotional and psychological problems? These scholars begin their analysis of these environments with a telling statistic: "In 1999, 28% of children under age 18 lived with a single parent."
Predictably enough, when compared to married peers, single parents are "more likely to report aggravation - frequently feeling frustrated and stressed by the experience of caring for their child" and are more likely to suffer from "poor mental health" themselves.
All too often, the Oregon scholars point out, single parenthood shows up in an ugly tangle of problems: "Children living in poverty tend to have difficulty in school," the investigators write, "experience maltreatment, and live in single-parent families with the attendant difficulties."
But in some of the "stressful family environments" where children are now developing the "multiple mental health conditions" they carry with them to school, there is no single parent. There is no parent at all. The Oregon investigators see serious "mental health implications" in the familial disintegration which has now put six percent of children under the age of eighteen in "grandparent-headed households." Though these grandparents are "responding to problems in the parent generation" (such as divorce, incarceration, or child abuse), they themselves are often "now single ... and, therefore ... likely to live in poverty."
The authors of the new article urge educators and nurses to make "early identification and management of mental health conditions" a high priority in their schools. But many Americans may wonder if children's academic success-as well as psychological health-does not depend upon a recovery of marital and family commitments centered on the home rather than the school.
