Jan 6, 2019, Dayton (OH) Daily News: Tipp City schools give more focus to emotional and mental health https://www.mydaytondailynews.com/news/local/tipp-city-schools-give-more-focus-emotional-and-mental-health/ARlGdMSYcRaEe6Cv7NiqEJ/ Students’ emotional and mental health is the focus of several initiatives at the Tipp City Exempted Village Schools. The board of education recently heard presentations from school counselors on mental health and wellness and a growing need for related services. It also heard details of a life skills assessment tool that will be introduced in early 2019 to help identify students who may need support in areas of social and emotional wellness. “Our expertise is education, not mental health. As we are seeing more and more students coming to our counselors with mental health needs, it is outside their area of expertise,” said Steve Verhoff, principal at Tippecanoe High School. High school counselor Christine Schmidt and middle school counselor Anne Toohey talked with the board Dec. 17 about mental health issues for students, how more schools are offering services and the benefits a school-based mental health therapist would offer the district. A therapist could offer onsite counseling for individuals and groups as well as provide staff mental health education, they said. “It is common in this area and some of the other area school districts to have a therapist on site” at least a couple of days a week, Toohey said. … Superintendent Gretta Kumpf talked about a Terra Metrics Life Skills Assessment tool the district plans to start, with parental permission, for students in the middle and high schools. The tool is designed to identify students who may be at risk and needing support in “social emotional wellness,” a program description said. …
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Childhood Lost
Children today are noticeably different from previous generations, and the proof is in the news coverage we see every day. This site shows you what’s happening in schools around the world. Children are increasingly disabled and chronically ill, and the education system has to accommodate them. Things we've long associated with autism, like sensory issues, repetitive behaviors, anxiety and lack of social skills, are now problems affecting mainstream students. Blame is predictably placed on bad parenting (otherwise known as trauma from home).
Addressing mental health needs is as important as academics for modern educators. This is an unrecognized disaster. The stories here are about children who can’t learn or behave like children have always been expected to. What childhood has become is a chilling portent for the future of mankind.
Anne Dachel, Media editor, Age of Autism
http://www.ageofautism.com/media/
(John Dachel, Tech. assist.)
What will happen in another 4 years? How can we go on like this? This is a national (and international) problem of monumental proportions. We have an entire new class of children who cannot be accommodated by the system: many are manifestly neurologically impaired. Meanwhile, the government and the medical profession sleep on regardless.
John Stone,
UK media editor, Age of Autism
The generation of American children born after 1990 are arguably the sickest generation in the history of our country.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
It seemed to me that with rising autism prevalence, you’d also see rising autism costs to society, and it turns out, the costs are catastrophic.
They calculated that in 2015 autism cost the United States $268 billion and they projected that if autism continues at its current rate, we’re looking at one trillion dollars a year in autism costs by 2025, so within five years.
Toby Rogers, PhD, Political economist
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