By Lucille Carr-Kaffashan, Ph.D. School districts typically have focused most of their mental health resources on high school students. Teenage angst is a much-discussed phenomenon, but many adults find it hard to believe that younger children can experience severe emotional distress and even consider self-harm and suicide. Given the dramatic…

by Effective School Solutions It appears it is becoming more and more frequent that we find ourselves in a situation where we need to address an issue of violence or devastation with the children in our lives. The following guide is meant to provide a trauma-attuned framework that can help…

By Laine Whitaker, MSL May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the United States and has been observed as such since 1949 when it was started by the National Association for Mental Health, now known as Mental Health America (MHA). After two years of unrelenting stress and uncertainty, now more…

by Effective School Solutions Literary scholars can debate about the layers of meaning associated with the opening lines of T.S. Eliot’s poem The Waste Land that refers to April as the “cruelest month”. Mental health professionals are certain, however, that contrary to popular belief, April along with May and June…

By Effective School Solutions In recent months there’s been a lot of attention on the mental health crisis affecting our country’s young people. We’ve heard from the President and the U.S. Surgeon General as well as prestigious organizations like the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, all declaring that…

by Coleen Vanderbeek, Psy.D, LPC., Lucille Carr-Kaffashan, Ph.D. The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the lives of students across the United States and around the world. Shifts back and forth from wide scale school closures, remote and hybrid learning models, and full week in-person school schedules have created disruptions in children’s…

By Effective School Solutions As the COVID-19 pandemic descended on the country in early spring of 2020 school districts everywhere turned on a dime to completely reconfigure the school day. The abrupt and unprecedented transition to remote learning was a move no one was ready for, yet teachers and staff…

by Effective School Solutions “The COVID era is forcing school administrators to grapple with a very difficult task — how best to respond to a vulnerable student population who are acting out behaviorally, more now than ever before.” – Effective School Solutions staff member Heading into the current school year…

By Duncan Young, CEO, Effective School Solutions & Amy Kennedy, Education Director, The Kennedy Forum There is no greater issue facing our education system today than the degradation in student mental health outcomes, including both higher numbers of students presenting with mental health challenges, as well as increased acuity levels…