We have an epidemic of depression and anger in our Nation which is touching us all - and will continue to plague us until we finally fix both the education and mental health systems. I wanted to share some realities with you all that many of you might not know about how mental health is handled in our public schools.
Many School Counselors are not behavioral health practitioners - rather, they specialize in graduation reqs and post secondary prep. *When I was practicing Mental Health, I worked as an outside provider of suicide threat assessments, individual and family counseling, and with DCFS and Juvenile services as a liaison with the schools - but many families who needed our services the most could not afford them.
The numbers of students they are assigned in most public schools are staggering - and can be well over 100-200 students per - which means that even if they are comfortable (and practiced) with providing mental health counseling services to students, they would never be able to meet all the needs of each student (given that they are also generally given a million other tasks that are related, or un-related to their job). *Many Clinicians in private practice see a reasonable number of patients - as there are only a certain number of hours in a week, and true services can only be provided with enough time.
School Psychologists typically do testing, and if you are a school lucky enough to have a Social Worker, you will likely be sharing both of those certificated support staff with other school(s). *Some Psychs and LCSW's will also provide behavioral care, but - again - it's a numbers game.
School Counselors are traditionally paid like Teachers (and were paid/considered Admin by 3 of the former Districts I worked at), though in our current world of Ed which has dropped salary scales - and are now being paid on a different category scale (which seems to be less than Teachers with same post-grad/years of service). *Typical private practice Licensed Professional Counselors will make at LEAST $20K more, annually, than Teachers - with comparable education (Masters) and years experience. In fact, I was making almost triple what I am, now.
The POINT is, this is part of why we're seeing this epidemic of depression and anger among our youth (and, to be honest, it's not just them - our entire society is effected by this). School shootings and other violence is just going to get worse til we straighten out this mess of education and mental health.
If you want to learn more, or to help us educate people about our options for the future, drop me a message!
