Texas ranks 46 out of 51 on the Mental Health America Youth Ranking 2023 report, indicating youth have a higher prevalence of mental illness and lower rates of access to care. Meanwhile, a 2023 study conducted by Forbes ranked Texas last overall as the worst state for mental health care in the U.S. due to high percentages of uninsured individuals with a mental illness.
“This is a systemic issue,” said Lacey Branker, a licensed clinical social worker at Lake Travis High School. “Schools in Texas really have an opportunity because you have such a large platform, and you have access to these students to really be able to create programs in schools that enable us to provide a more simplified version of support across the board to help students.”
Branker said she believes stigma is also a huge component of why accessibility to mental health care in Texas is limited as well as a lack of mental health providers.
"There’s a huge burnout rate because there are so many needs and not enough providers,” Branker said. “More than that, there’s not a lot of resources and access, unfortunately.”
School district services
All three school districts in the Lake Travis-Westlake area—Eanes ISD, Lake Travis ISD and Leander ISD—employ a variety of mental health professionals.
District budgets over the last five years reflect the increasing need for more mental health professionals to be added to sta ff. LTISD increased its budget for guidance and counseling services from $3.08 million in the 2018-19 school year to $4.62 million in the 2022-23 school year; EISD increased its budget from $2.08 million to $2.49 million; and LISD increased its budget from $16.72 million to $21.14 million, according to district documents.
Heidi Sauer, EISD coordinator of counseling and social-emotional learning, said the district has three layers of mental health professionals—school counselors, licensed school-based therapists and school psychologists.
“Our school-based therapists are for any student,” Sauer said. “They’re accessible to any student or family who needs help.”
School psychologists, Sauer said, primarily serve the needs of special education students.
LTISD’s mental health professional sta ff include school counselors, social workers and school psychologists, said Surita Scholla, an eighth grade school counselor at Hudson Bend Middle School.
LISD Director of Counseling Services Steve Clark said the district has school counselors as well as a team of 15 who make up the Student and Family Support Team, which includes licensed clinical social workers and licensed professional counselors.
“They provide school-based therapy for students, which we involve the parents in,” Clark said. “It’s treated much like community-based therapy except it’s in the school setting.”
All three districts also support students through the Texas Child Health Access Through Telemedicine, or TCHATT, a program through The University of Texas that provides telemedicine or telehealth support to school districts and their students to help identify and assess behavioral health needs of adolescents and children as well as access to mental health services.
“What TCHATT does is it allows school counselors and the social workers to connect with their programs and get students ... virtual visits within the school day,” Branker said.
Branker said the program is especially helpful for students who do not have health insurance or who have very limited health insurance. She said the program provides short-term care with four to seven virtual therapy sessions as well as providing psychiatric assistance for medication management if needed.
Proactive approaches
Not only do all three school districts provide mental health care services for their students, but they also take proactive approaches to overall wellness and well-being through social-emotional learning, or SEL, curricula.
“At its most basic level, SEL is about teaching core life skills, so you’re looking at teaching kids how to be resilient in the case of disappointment or setback because that’s a human experience to be disappointed in something or to hit ... barriers as you’re trying to achieve your goals,” Sauer said.
The focus of the SEL curricula is primarily in elementary grades at all three school districts using a nationwide program called Second Step. The five components are self-awareness, management, responsible decision-making, social awareness and relationship skills.
“It’s a proactive approach to give students skills to navigate things when they’re having maybe a little distress, but just typical distress—it’s not a mental health curriculum,” Clark said.
Sauer said SEL skills have a lot of overlap with the 21st-century skills that are sought by employers, including collaboration, self-management, problem-solving, being flexible and communication skills. SEL provides students with the skills to enable them to live a healthy, functioning life in the future in regards to regulating emotions, expressing them selves, using communication skills and dealing with conflict, Branker said.
Fighting stigma
Despite the mental health services and resources that are o ffered by LTISD, Branker said one of the biggest challenges when it comes to mental health is fighting the stigma.
A student club at Lake Travis High School called Breathe Initiative aims to reduce the stigma around mental health as well as providing support and a safe space for fellow students.
Branker said the student group, whose members spoke at a board of trustees meeting May 17, is trying to make more of a connection between LTISD’s upper administration and school needs in regard to mental health.
“One of the biggest things they have tried to really recognize, as far as just trying to normalize mental health, is teaching people that it’s just like physical health,” Branker said. “The amount of emphasis and time and energy and just understanding that we put towards physical health and support, we should do the same for mental health.”
Brooke Davis, a senior at Lake Travis High School and the president of Breathe Initiative, said a 2021 survey of 1,134 students showed at least one-third or more reported they were suffering from anxiety, depression, a lack of sleep, an inability to concentrate and struggles with daily stressors.
Iris Castruia, the club’s secretary and a junior, said the survey reported 92.8% of respondents cited school stressors as one of the biggest challenges students face.
“We need a more robust school culture that supports mental health eff orts and o ffers us a seat at the table,” Castruia said.
Branker said mental health is a right, and every person deserves access to the care they need.
“We all need to just come to the table and recognize that mental health needs to be valued as much as physical health and that mental health is a spectrum,” she said.
