When Benito Luna-Herrera taught his seventh-grade social studies class, he was wary of signs of inner turmoil. There are many these days.

One of his 12-year-old students felt her world was falling apart. Remote learning upended her friendships. The affair with her boyfriend bordered on violence. Her family life is stressful. “I’ve had enough,” the girl told Luna-Herrera during the pandemic, sharing a detailed suicide plan.

The other student is usually a big joke and full of confidence. But one day, she told him that she didn’t want to live anymore. She also made plans to end her own life.

Luna-Herrera is just a teacher at a middle school in Southern California, but stories of students getting stuck are increasingly common across the country. The silver lining is that special training helps him know what to look for and how to respond when he sees signs of a mental emergency.

Since the pandemic began, experts have warned of a mental health crisis for American children. According to interviews with teachers, administrators, education officials and mental health experts, the condition is now reaching alarming levels in schools in the form of increased depression, anxiety, panic attacks, eating disorders, fighting and suicidal thoughts among children.

In low-income areas, where adverse experiences among children were high before the pandemic, the crisis was exacerbated and exacerbated by shortages of school staff and mental health professionals.

Luna-Herrera teaches in a high-poverty area in the Mojave Desert, and she is one of a small but growing number of California teachers who take the “Mental Health First Aid for Youth” class. It teaches adults how to spot the warning signs of mental health risks and substance abuse in children, and how to prevent tragedies.

The California Department of Education provides funding for any school districts that apply for the program, and the pandemic has accelerated the move to make such classes a requirement. The training program is run by the National Council of Mental Health and is available in every state.

“I don’t want to read about another teen with a warning sign and we turn a blind eye,” said Sen. Anthony Pottingino, author of a bill that would require all California middle and high schools to train at least 75 percent of their students . Behavioral health employees. “Teachers and school staff are on the front lines of the crisis and need to be trained to detect students who are suffering.”

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While childhood depression and anxiety have been on the rise for years, the relentless stress and grief brought on by the pandemic have exacerbated them, experts say, especially for those cut off from counselors and other school resources during distance learning People with mental health problems.

For children, the problem with distance learning goes beyond academics, said Sharon Hoover, professor of child psychiatry at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health.

Hoover said child abuse and neglect have increased during the pandemic. For children living in distress, with parents who are alcoholic or abusive, remote learning means they have nowhere to go. Those who lacked technology or had spotty internet connections were more isolated than their peers and fell further behind academically and socially.

Many kids recover from prolonged isolation, but for others it takes longer, and mental health issues often lag behind stressors.

“We can’t assume ‘Okay, we’re back in school, it’s been a few months, everyone should be back to normal now.’ That’s not the case,” Hoover said.

Returning to school after months of isolation has heightened some children’s anxiety. Teachers say students have more difficulty concentrating, concentrating, sitting still, and many need to relearn how to socialize and resolve conflict face-to-face after prolonged screen time.

Children want to pick up where they left off, but some find friendship and their ability to cope with social pressures changes. Educators say they’ve also seen a worrying increase in apathy — about grades, how students treat each other and themselves — and less empathy.

“I’ve never seen children in my life be so mean to each other,” said Trin Musbach, who trains teachers in mental health awareness and other social-emotional programs in the Del Norte Unified School District, a high-poverty area in the rural north. Terrin Musbach) said. california. “There’s more school violence, there’s more vaping, there’s more substance abuse, there’s more sexual activity, there’s more suicidal thoughts, and we’re going to worry about every behavior of the kids.”

Over the past decade, many states have mandated suicide prevention training for teachers, and the pandemic has prompted some states to expand to include mental health awareness and support for behavioral health needs.

But school districts across the country also say they need more psychologists and counselors. The Hopeful Futures Campaign, a coalition of national mental health groups, released a report last month that found most states were struggling with mental health support in schools. Only Idaho and the District of Columbia surpassed the nationally recommended ratio of one psychologist per 500 students.

In some states, including West Virginia, Missouri, Texas and Georgia, more than 4,000 students have just one school psychologist, the report said. Likewise, few states meet the goal of one counselor per 250 students.

President Joe Biden has proposed $1 billion in new federal funding to help schools hire more counselors and psychologists and support suicide prevention programs. In December, US surgeon Vivek Murthy issued a rare public consultation on “the urgent need to address the nation’s youth mental health crisis.”

According to research cited in the advisory, the number of teenage girls and 4% more boys in the U.S. seeing a suspected suicide attempt to the emergency room by early 2021 compared to the same period in 2019.

Monica Nepomuceno, who directs the California Department of Education’s mental health program, said more than 8,000 teachers, administrators and school staff have accepted the teen mental health first aid program in California since 2014. training.

She said more needs to be done in the country’s largest state, which employs more than 600,000 K-12 workers in schools.

The course helps differentiate the typical teen’s way of dealing with stress — doors shut, crying, angry outbursts — from the warning signs of mental distress, which can be blatant or subtle.

Red flags include when children talk about death or suicide, but can be more nuanced, such as: “I can’t do this anymore” or “I’m sick of it,” said Tramaine El-Amin, a national spokeswoman for the Council on Mental Health. Since its launch in 2012, more than 550,000 K-12 educators across the country have taken the Adolescent Mental Health First Aid program, she said.

Changes in behaviour can be cause for concern – a child stops a sport or activity they are passionate about and does not replace it with another; a typical pieced together child starts to look often unkempt; grades plummet or stop sex A student with homework; a kid who eats lunch alone and no longer hangs out with friends.

After noticing that there might be a problem, the course teaches that the next step is to ask students without pressure or judgment, and let them know you care and want to help.

“Sometimes adults ask a question that does more harm than good,” said Luna-Herrera, a social studies teacher at California City Middle School, a two-hour drive from Los Angeles.

He took the course in spring 2021 and started using it two weeks later. It was during distance learning, and a student did not show up for online tutoring, but he found her chatting online on the school’s distance learning platform and getting into a heated argument with her then-boyfriend. Luna reached out to her privately.

“I asked her if she was okay,” he said. Gradually, the girl told Luna-Herrera of her problems with her friends and boyfriend, as well as of family problems that left her feeling lonely and hopeless.

The class tells adults to ask open-ended questions to keep the conversation going, rather than projecting themselves into the teen’s questions with comments like: “You’ll be fine; it’s not that bad; I’ve been through it; try to ignore it.” Things that seem trivial to adults can feel overwhelming to young people, and failing to realize this can become a barrier to conversation.

The 12-year-old told Luna-Herrera she had considered hurting herself. “Is this a recurring thought?” he asked, recalling how his heart started beating when she revealed her plans for suicide.

Like CPR first aid training, this course teaches how to handle a crisis: sound the alarm and get expert help. Don’t leave a person who is contemplating suicide alone. As Luna-Herrera continued talking to the girl, he texted his school superintendent, who answered the principal’s call, they called 911, and police arrived at the home, where they spoke with the girl and her mother, The latter was taken aback and didn’t realize it.

“He absolutely saved that kid’s life,” said Mojave Associates Superintendent Katherine Aguirre, who oversees about 3,000 students in the area, most of them Latinos and blacks from financially struggling families child.

Aguirre recognized the need for behavioral health training early in the pandemic and has trained all of her staff, from teachers to yard supervisors and cafeteria workers, through the Department of Education.

“It’s about awareness. Sandy Hook promises: If you see something, say something,” she said.

That didn’t happen to 14-year-old Taya Bruell.

According to her father, Harry Bruell, Taya was a bright, precocious student who began battling mental health issues around age 11. At the time, the family lived in Boulder, Colorado, where Taya had been hospitalized for psychiatric treatment, but remained a model student: she got straight-Awards, was the co-leader of her high school writing club, and Teach seniors to use computers in their spare time.

In literature class, Taya was assigned to keep a diary. In it, she paints a disturbing portrait of self-harm and writes about how much she hated her body and heard her wanting silence.

Her teacher read the assignment and wrote, “Taya, very thorough journal. I love reading the entries. A+”

Three months later, in February 2016, Taya committed suicide. After her death, Taya’s parents found the diary in her room and brought it to the school, where they learned that Taya’s teachers had not informed school counselors or administrators of what she had seen. They don’t blame the teacher, but always wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t ignored the signs of danger.

“I don’t think the teacher wanted to hurt our daughter. I think when she saw those obvious warning signs in Taya’s diary, she didn’t know what to do,” said her father, who later moved with the family to St. Barbara, California.

He believes legislation requiring teachers to undergo behavioral health training will save lives. “It teaches you to sound the alarm, not walk away, which is what happened to Taya.”