More schools offer a therapist on-site

School shootings, the anxiety of being a teenager and complicated home lives can leave students with more on their minds than books while they're at school.

So when Community Counseling Center approached Central High School about making a school-based therapist available, principal Mike Cowan said the school "jumped on it immediately."

So far, school-based therapist Micah Harris has been busy. Harris, a licensed social worker with Community Counseling Center, said services also are available at schools in Ste. Genevieve, Mo., and plans are to offer them at schools in Jackson and probably at elementary schools in Cape Girardeau, he said.

Now about four weeks into the job, Harris said, "every day is a new adventure ... Each child is unique. They have different issues going on and different mental health concerns."

Dr. Sharon Braun, a licensed professional counselor and spokeswoman for Community Counseling Center, said schools are seeing more children who thought of suicide and harming themselves.

"We see children cutting themselves as an option to not feeling emotional pain," Braun said. "There's just so many mental health issues around. ..."

Ongoing problems such as anxiety, depression and home issues are what Harris has seen to date. Braun said bullying also is an issue, and children are dealing with things now that didn't exist 10 years ago. Also, because of texting and cellphones, students don't necessarily learn social skills.

"From what I've seen, a lot of children that are anxious have a hard time being in school. Those are children that hopefully we can identify because a lot of them are juniors and seniors that are almost done, but they're having such a hard time of coping. Hopefully, this will help them make it through until they graduate," Harris said.

For school-based services, Braun said children under Medicaid with a diagnosis or those covered by third-party insurance that includes mental health coverage may receive services at school. She added one of the good points of the Affordable Care Act is "it does have provisions for mental health and substance abuse."

"It would be wonderful if we could just go into the school and provide help to every child who was needing help, but we can't do that," she said. "We have to have pay sources to make that happen."

Several years ago, Cowan said, the United Way of Southeast Missouri was working on an initiative to increase graduation rates.

"One of the strands of conversation that kept surfacing throughout those meetings was the need for mental health services and how many students come to school who are in mental-health crisis," Cowan said.

If a faculty member suspects a student needs mental health services, the counselor or assistant principal confer and then pass a referral on to a therapist who does the initial assessment, Cowan said.

Harris is on campus twice a week.

"This is very exciting ... You can tell that I'm all over this," Cowan said. "This is a need we've had for a long time. It's a Missouri need; it's a Midwest need; it's a national need. ... We think it's not only a way of providing direct services to children in need, but also families in need. ... It's a matter of safety and security, being able to identify as soon as possible children who might be in mental distress."

According to information from the National Association of School Psychologists, provided by the Missouri Department of Mental Health, "research demonstrates that students who receive social-emotional and mental-health support do better academically.

"School climate, classroom behavior, on-task learning and students' sense of connectedness and well-being improve as well," the association said.

Schools are the ideal settings to provide mental-health services because school psychologists know the students, parents and staff. School also is where children spend most of their day, the information says.

There is no data on how difficult it is to find a psychologist or psychiatrist in Missouri, but Department of Mental Health director of public affairs Debra Walker said anecdotes suggest it can take "weeks and often months" to get an appointment.

Gov. Jay Nixon announced in December his balanced-budget proposal for fiscal year 2015 would include $20 million in grants for Missouri's public colleges and universities to educate an additional 1,200 students for careers in mental-health care fields through his Caring for Missourians mental health initiative, according to an article on the governor's website.

The article says 104 Missouri counties and most of the city of St. Louis are designated by the federal government as mental health professional shortage areas. Seventy-two of Missouri's 114 counties don't have a licensed psychiatrist, it said.

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