NY Senator Calls For Mental Health Days For Students [POLL]

A New York Democratic state senator believes it would a good idea to allow public school students to take a "mental health day" rather than a sick day, which is currently categorized as an excused absence. Senator Brad Hoylman of Manhattan introduced legislation this week that would "establish mental or behavioral health issues as permitted reasons for a student's absence from school," according to a press release from his office.

He said the state Education Department would have to implement the change, for which related laws have been enacted in Oregon, Utah and Minnesota.

"According to a recent study, the number of children and teenagers treated in America's emergency rooms for suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts nearly doubled between 2007 and 2015," Hoylman said.

He feels the state needs to recognize suicide and self-harm among young New Yorkers as "the major public health crisis that it is."

Hoylman went on to say that we need to do everything we can to help students who are struggling to seek treatment.

"An absence from school should never be a barrier to mental health treatment for a child in New York State," he said.

Dr. John Garruto, president of the New York Association of School Psychologists, agreed that it was important for mental health issues to be on par with physical health for students, but he takes it a step further.

"[J]ust as schools have nurses to address the physical health needs of students, they need to have the appropriate school-employed mental health professionals, such as school psychologists, to meet the social and emotional needs of students to prevent excessive absence due to these issues," he said in a prepared statement.

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