This lack of knowledge may lead them to express themselves in ways that are seen as unhealthy or can even be harmful to themselves and others, she said.
“They can’t articulate emotion like adults can. Their brain is not fully developed, and so oftentimes they don’t have the verbal capacity; they just don’t know what those emotions are. So instead of saying, ‘Oh I’m really stressed,' or, 'I’m having anxiety,’ they might have a behavior issue,” she said.
This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity. See excerpts of this interview in the Aug. 4 Cy-Fair edition of Community Impact Newspaper.
How might stress impact students in the classroom?
What that might look like in a school setting is they might shut down; their grade[s] may shift. Those kids that usually are pretty good students might become not good students. They might start struggling in school; they might start looking like they can’t focus or they’re having attention issues because they are having trouble focusing because their emotions are big, and they’re experiencing the emotion.
Sometimes you might even see kids pull out their own hair or pinch themselves or scratch themselves in extreme cases. And you might have kids starting to say, "I have stomachaches," or, "I have headaches," or, "I don’t feel well; I’m not wanting to go to school," or not wanting to participate in activities that they used to participate in because they are showing psychosomatic symptoms. It’s a physical representation of their emotion.
Did learning in isolation during COVID-19 foster negative feelings for students?
More than ever before, we’re having kids even report that they want to escape; they want to run away, having social anxiety. Kids that had lots of friends before are having trouble in social situations. There are kids that I’m seeing today that are deathly afraid of COVID[-19]. They’re scared because they’re going back to school and they’ve been back in school, but not everybody takes COVID[-19] as seriously as they do, and then they get scared something’s going to happen.
Have you seen an increase in social anxiety or other mental health issues among adolescents?
I actually specialize in adolescent treatment, and I am experiencing a lot of adolescents who are still having difficulties staying at school a full day. They are still having difficulty getting to school on time and getting out of the car and going in. [There has been a] definite uptick in panic attacks amongst these kids and [a] definite uptick in the number of kids needing pharmaceutical services such as anxiety medication or antidepressants. ... And [an increase in] teens and adolescents and young college-aged kids just coming out of their adolescence who are self-harming and who have reported suicidal ideation or thoughts of suicide.
Why is it important for students to feel safe, and how does feeling unsafe affect them emotionally or academically?
So, one of the basic levels of human need on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is safety. If our safety needs are not met, we are in a fight or flight [mode] in our brain, and our brain produces certain chemicals, such as cortisol or adrenaline, that keep us in those stages of fight or flight and ... we cannot retain new information. It’s almost as though a barrier is in between our long-term memory and our short-term memory. ... And the brain has a way of deciding what’s important and if we’re in a state like survival mode where we’re needing safety then our brain is not holding onto anything that doesn't have to do with just being safe.
How might educators help alleviate some of the tension that students are feeling?
I definitely think relationships in the classroom are important. Those kids spend a lot of time in those classrooms, and so they need to feel that the person that’s in charge of that classroom can be trusted and that they can go to that person if they need something and they’re going to be heard. I think educators more than ever need to bridge the gap, the education gap and the safety gap.
But it’s even more important that teachers need to spend more time at the beginning of the year and then consistently throughout the year building rapport with their students, building those relationships and building community within the classroom where kids know that they can lean on other kids.
What are some misconceptions that parents may not understand about their child’s mental health?
Sometimes we expect them to sort of act like adults. We expect them to verbalize their feelings, and we expect them to move through their feelings, but we need to allow them the ability to experience their feelings and if that takes them a little longer, that’s OK. We need to allow them to do that. The kids are 100% more knowledgeable about things than we think they are. And when I say knowledgable, that doesn’t always mean they understand the information. It just means they have the information.
What else would you like people to know about mental health and how the pandemic has impacted students?
I think it’s going to take a little while for our society to come out of this. [Two years is] not enough time, and I don’t think we’re going to know the full effects of these things until another eight years pass and we have had an opportunity to follow some of these different groups of kids over a decade. But I think we need to start looking at teaching emotions in school ... and we need to start having support groups at the school level for parents so the parents can be educated and they can know, "How do I help my kid with these things?" Because these are things that we have not had to do for a while, and so education and community support is a key thing.
