Pictured above: This is the third year in a row that the college of education has received a grant to assist Florida school districts in combating mental health.
Thomas Iacobucci | The Crow’s Nest
By James Bennett III
USF St. Petersburg’s College of Education has been awarded a $10 million grant to help grade school personnel identify and address mental health issues.
This is the third consecutive year that the College of Education received a grant to combat mental health issues.
In 2018, it was awarded a $2.2 million grant from the Florida Department of Education to initiate the Youth Mental Health Awareness Training Administration Project (YMHAT). In 2019, the College of Education was given $5.5 million to continue funding YMHAT, which trains K-12 personnel in various Florida school districts to recognize when students are struggling with emotional or mental health.
The money is used for things like training materials, travel expenses and hiring substitutes when teachers are out of the classroom.
Training is administered through two methods.
First, there’s a “train the trainer” component, where personnel from the National Council for Behavioral Health meet with up to 16 people at a time and teach a course on “mental health first aid.” Those 16 people go back to their school district and train school employees.
In other cases, a New York-based online training course called Kognito walks trainees through difficult conversations.
The program doesn’t only focus on teachers. School personnel, like principals, cafeteria workers, custodians and bus drivers are also trained to identify the warning signs and help distressed students find professional help. A range of school personnel are trained to spot mental health issues because students act differently depending on their environment.
In a press release, Jordan Knab, the university’s principal investigator, said school districts are encouraged to involve families through training or by establishing support groups for parents and guardians of children with mental health issues.
School districts are also encouraged to combat the stigma surrounding mental health by creating awareness campaigns.
“On a national level, we’ve seen more and more Hollywood stars, sports and public figures coming forward and talking about mental health and mental illness. That certainly is a good message for our students that this affects everybody,” Knab said in a press release. “It doesn’t matter how rich you are or how famous you are or how good life seems, you can still suffer with mental health issues.”
The funding for YMHAT was allocated through the state Legislature under the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act. The bill was passed less than one month after the shooting that killed 17 students on Feb. 14, 2018, and is summarized as “critical public safety legislation (to) establish safeguards designed to enhance safety in schools.”
According to the press release, the College of Education uses the money to “help identify research and evidence-based practices, coordinate the funding, facilitate reporting and arrange training.”
School districts are also encouraged to combat the stigma surrounding mental health ???
I did not find the above amusing: You combat those taught or teaching that prejudice, you do not join them.
Harold A Maio, retired mental health editor