Salem Schools Tackle 'Profoundly Disturbing' Mental Health Crisis

SALEM, MA —A Salem Public Schools Mental Health Task Force designed to address what was described as a growing crisis among students in the district — and across the state — unveiled plans and programs to increase access, understanding and support for mental health services and social-emotional learning in the district during Monday night's School Committee meeting.

Salem Public Schools Executive Director of Student Support Services Ellen Wingard outlined what she and the Task Force determined to be an increasing equity gap in mental health services and how to respond through increasing communication with families, professional development with staff to identify and address students potentially struggling, and destigmatizing those issues among students.

"Our students in Salem haven't been sheltered from the increased rates of mental health issues such as PTSD, anxiety, depression," Wingard said. "We are seeing that in our classrooms every day and our teachers are bearing witness to these mental health crises that our families and our students are going through.

"We knew that we had an issue to contend with and we also knew that we had to get creative."

Wingard pointed to the demand that was "higher than we had expected" for the recently implemented Cartwheel on-demand mental health counseling services. She also noted that the schools had recently started universal mental health screening for students in grades 6 and 9.

She cited large insurance deductibles as an impediment to ensuring that all students receive the same level of health support.

"The expanded need for mental health services in our community also widened the gap of access for our families," she said. "There are fewer and fewer bilingual counselors, insurance is an issue for a lot of our families, waiting lists are an issue for a lot of our families, and so kids who need ongoing treatment, families that need ongoing support, have been unable to get that over the last couple of years."

Superintendent Steve Zrike said he has become "profoundly worried" about student mental health struggles in recent years — especially among girls after a recent Washington Post article on the "crisis in American girlhood" determined that nearly one in three high school girls said they had seriously considered suicide and that six in 10 girls were "so persistently sad and hopeless that they had stopped regular activities."

"That is startling," Zrike said. "When you talk to our young people in the schools here ... this is what is on their mind — the mental health state of themselves of their peers, and how much support they need. Families are struggling with getting help not only for themselves but their children and we can't work fast enough to help that need.

"Yes, this wasn't necessarily the responsibility of schools. But we have to get involved in this crisis. We're going to lose kids — literally, we are going to lose people, and this has me profoundly worried."

Wingard said recommended solutions from the Task Force are both "system-wide and community-wide" and range from creating more inclusive environments within the schools to looking at outside factors that have become increasingly challenging since the onset of the COVID-19 health crisis three years ago.

"We are seeing more and more the impact of social media on our kids' brain development, on their social development and on their self-esteem," Wingard said. "We want to make sure our parents feel well-equipped and empowered to work with their own child on either setting limits or talking with their child in a way that's helpful."

Zrike said the mental health crisis is one "we all have to own in this community."

"Not just in the schools but in the city," Zrike said. "How do we create schools where kids feel engaged and where they want to be there? ... As a district and as a city we cannot turn away from this being a national crisis that we are witnessing right now among our teenagers, especially.

"This has to be a priority as we think about funding, as we think about resources moving forward."

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)