Fort Worth students are struggling amid COVID-19. Here’s how schools are helping them
Last spring, Vanessa Jimenez needed to run an errand. She made sure each of her kids had a mask, then they climbed in her car and they drove off.
It was the first time the family had been out of the house since state officials locked the state down at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. They were being as safe as they could be, Jimenez said, but her kids seemed worried. Her daughter, now a seventh-grader at Monnig Middle School in Fort Worth, burst into tears. When Jimenez asked what was wrong, her daughter said she was afraid she would catch the virus.
Jimenez has four children — three in the Fort Worth school district and one at Tarrant County College. At the beginning of the pandemic, her kids seemed worried and fearful about whether they’d get sick. Months later, some of that fear has subsided, she said. But she can still see they’re more anxious than usual. With no end to the pandemic in sight, Jimenez worries about how it affects her kids from a social and emotional standpoint, and she wonders how long those effects will last.
Before the Fort Worth school district began bringing students back in person last month, officials prepared to help them cope with the trauma and stress they’d experienced since the pandemic began. Now that students in every grade are back in the classroom, teachers and counselors have learned that many are struggling. School counselors are talking with students about suicide prevention and how to cope with the challenges the pandemic created. They’re also reaching out to students’ parents, many of whom have challenges of their own.
“Kids generally do as well as the adults in their world,” said Cindy Bethany, the Fort Worth school district’s director of prevention and crisis response. “And unfortunately, the adults in the world are hanging on by their fingernails.”
Children take emotional cues from adults
Children generally learn to manage emotions from the adults in their lives, Bethany said. For babies, that management comes when parents pick them up when they’re crying, she said. Parents of toddlers and elementary school-aged children might teach self-management through warm interactions and modeling of healthy behaviors, she said. But when parents are dealing with heightened stress or anxiety, it teaches children that there’s something to be afraid of, she said. Often, children internalize that fear and anxiety without completely understanding what’s causing it, she said.
Many parents of students in the district are struggling themselves, Bethany said, so they may have a harder time helping their children handle their emotions. Students show up to school in tears because they’re worried about their parents, she said. That’s partly due to COVID-19, she said, but it’s also a part of ordinary life for many students. About 70% of students in the district had significant symptoms of trauma before the pandemic began, Bethany said. Those symptoms don’t just affect students’ emotional lives, she said. They also make it harder for them to learn.
“We can’t teach anything — not reading, not math, anything — until we have a brain that is calm enough to learn,” Bethany said.
Cook Children’s reports spike in suicidal patients
Mental health professionals are concerned about how school shutdowns and other effects of the pandemic affect students’ mental health. In September, 37 children were admitted to Cook Children’s Medical Center after attempting suicide, hospital officials reported late last month. It was the worst month for youth suicide attempts the hospital had seen since at least 2015, said Dr. Kia Carter, the hospital’s medical director for psychiatry.
“We’ve seen this number rising year after year, so it’s not surprising that it’s this high,” Carter said. “Suicide has become the second-leading cause of death for kids and adolescents in the last year, versus two years ago when it was the third-leading cause of death.”
September’s record came after a near-record month in August, when the hospital admitted 29 patients who had attempted suicide. Hospital officials said August’s total represented an “alarming” uptick. Officials said not all of August’s attempts were related to COVID-19 — about 30% of the children reported issues with sexual identity and gender. But last month, Carter said remote learning is likely a factor driving the uptick in youth suicide attempts.
“I think everything in proportion is good, but when something is to this extent where some kids have had to do 100% virtual since March, it’s been very difficult,” she said. “When kids have school, they have an outlet. They have other people to talk to. They have friends and social activities. Now, it’s just them, their parents and siblings.”
FWISD counselors find ways to help
Kristen Riggsby, a counselor at Monnig Middle School, said the district has been proactive about mental health awareness and suicide prevention. As the district began to bring students back to school in phases last month, counselors at Monnig talked to homeroom classes about mental health and suicide prevention, she said. The school also has a program called Hope Squad, which teaches students the warning signs of suicide and encourages them to find help for friends who are at risk, she said. Also, the district has a system that sends school leaders an alert anytime a student uses a district-issued device to search any of several key words, like “death” or “suicide.”
“It’s a little bit Big Brother, but at the same time, they are still children,” she said.
Although most students are under heightened stress because of the pandemic, Riggsby said students who have come back to school in person seem to fare better than those at home. Remote learning can be isolating, she said, and feelings of isolation and solitude can put students at greater risk of suicide.
When students turn to social media to connect, it can make matters worse, she said. Students might see the heavily curated social media presences of friends and family and think everything is perfect in their lives, she said. Their own lives might feel messy and imperfect by comparison, she said, and they may feel like something is wrong with them.
Adults can be too quick to dismiss their children’s emotional distress, Riggsby said. Adults have the benefit of hindsight, she said. They know they made it through the problems they encountered when they were children, and many of them went on to deal with bigger, more complicated issues as adults. But adults may forget that children lack that perspective, she said. So every challenge, whether it’s the end of a friendship, a bad grade or a months-long pandemic, is one of the worst things that’s ever happened to them up to that point, she said. She encourages parents to listen to their children when they want to talk, take their concerns seriously and recognize that they’re in a difficult stage in their lives.
“Middle school is a hard time,” she said. “I think it would be pretty rare to find someone who would say, looking back on their life, that middle school was the best time of their life.”
School shutdowns — and the pandemic more broadly — have been huge sources of stress for families, Riggsby said. For months, many parents have been “in survival mode,” she said, and some of that stress gets transferred over to their children. Parents need to be aware of how that stress affects their children, she said, and they need to understand those effects won’t go away overnight once the pandemic ends. Just as school districts are likely to have to deal with the academic effects of the pandemic for some time, students and families may live with long-term social and emotional consequences, she said.
“We’re all in a state of triage right now, where we’re trying to survive and get through,” Riggsby said. “And once we get through, that’s when the real work is going to begin.”
Nicholas Simmons, a counselor at North Hi Mount Elementary School, said the “overwhelming majority” of students who have come back to school in person are adjusting well. But the pandemic has been a frightening time, especially for the youngest children, who often don’t completely understand what’s happening, he said. But most students also seem excited to be back and adapting well to the changes school leaders made to control the virus’ spread.
Counselors’ roles have expanded this year, Simmons said. Families who are worried about how the pandemic affects their children have contacted the counselor’s office for help, he said. Counselors have tried to make themselves available to talk about their concerns, reinforce what they’re already doing well and give them tips on how to help their children cope with the added stress they feel this year.
Many factors could contribute to suicidal ideation in children, Simmons said. Family turmoil, the death of a loved one or uneasiness with school life could all put students at risk, he said. Other factors, like domestic abuse, are harder for teachers to spot when students aren’t at school in person, he said. Elementary-aged children are less likely to attempt suicide than older students, he said, but parents, teachers and counselors still need to be able to spot the warning signs of emotional distress and take them seriously. Even if a student never acts on those feelings, they could have long-lasting consequences, he said.
COVID-19’s effects could outlast the virus
The mental health effects of the pandemic could follow students for years, especially in communities that don’t have adequate responses in place, said Sharon Hoover, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and co-director of the National Center for School Mental Health. School closures have left students feeling isolated and cut off from teachers and friends, she said. Students have also lost friends, family members, teachers or other members of their communities to COVID-19, she said. Families are dealing with job losses or other economic fallout from the pandemic, something that children feel acutely, Hoover said.
It’s difficult to say how much of the mental health impact from COVID-19 is a result of school shutdowns rather than the many other issues the pandemic has caused, Hoover said. Often, even patients experiencing heightened stress or emotional distress can’t pin down the specific factors that led to their own issues, she said.
Hoover cautioned that throwing school doors open and bringing every student back inside isn’t necessarily the solution to student mental health issues. Students who are already back at school in person also experience heightened stress and anxiety related to the pandemic, she said. No matter what decisions they make about when and how to bring students back to school, school districts and their communities need to have mental health supports in place to help students and their families manage that stress, she said.
“We need to take a more nuanced look at what’s happening,” she said.
Children lose out on social interactions
Jimenez, the Fort Worth school district mom, said she worries about how the pandemic will continue to affect her kids even after it’s over. She knows they’re losing out on the kinds of interactions that help them learn how to navigate social situations. She also feels like the rules of those social interactions are changing overnight — it’s no longer safe for friends and family members outside the same household to hug each other, and the cheek-kiss greeting that’s expected in many Latino families is now off limits, she said.
Jimenez said things could be worse for her children. They have each other, she said, and she’s noticed them getting closer since the pandemic began. They talk and laugh together in ways they didn’t always, and older ones help younger ones with homework.
But she’s also noticed her kids shutting out other friends who aren’t in their household. Before the pandemic began, all three were outgoing and enjoyed spending time with friends. Now, those friendships have either been put on hold or moved online. That’s the right thing to do, she said, since in-person interactions raise the risk of spreading COVID-19. But she wonders whether they’ll be their normal, outgoing selves once the pandemic ends and those interactions are safe again.
“The world’s changed,” Jimenez said. “I feel like this is for the long haul.”
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 4:11 PM.
CORRECTION: Details about the Hope Squad program were incorrect in an earlier version of this story. The story has been updated.
