With in-person classes resuming after the holiday break just as the pandemic is surging mightily due to the Omicron variant (62,000 students and staff in LAUSD are out with positive coronavirus cases), issues concerning students’ mental health and academic performance are once again front and center.
Consider these sobering facts:
- According to the National Institutes of Health, COVID has caused 140,000 children in the U.S. under the age of 18 to lose a parent, custodial grandparent, or grandparent caregiver who provided basic needs.
- The World Health Organization has reported that access to critical mental health services has been disrupted or halted due to the pandemic, and hospital emergency rooms across the country are reporting upticks in mental-health cases as a result.
- New U.S. data shows a precipitous rise in dropouts, failing grades and declines in overall attendance, attributed to remote learning that has had a disproportionately negative impact on underserved communities due to unreliable internet access and economic impacts of the pandemic suffered by students’ caregivers.
So there’s the bad news, and it only scratches the surface. The full scope of the pandemic’s effects on mental health and academic performance won’t be known for years or even decades.
However, PESA is doing all it can to support students in this time of need through mental-health counseling and academic tutoring.
“A lot of my students express that they have depression and anxiety,” says Olivia Fuentes, an MSW intern with PESA and a second-year graduate student at Azusa Pacific University. “They’ve been taken away from their friends, their social circles. Seeing their friends on Zoom is just not the same thing as seeing them in person.
“To gain rapport, I have them talk about their feelings and let them know that while unfortunately this is the time we’re in, it will pass. I suggest meditation and journaling, letting the journal be their friend for the moment.”
Some of these cases can progress to crisis levels. “One of my clients came in very apprehensive recently,” says Fuentes, “and within a few days she ended up needing to be hospitalized.” The 13-year-old has agreed to see a psychologist, but she also specifically wants to continue to see Fuentes, a nod to the trust the two have developed.
As for academic tutoring, “it is offered to students K-12,” says Director of Administration Cindy Henriquez, “and is aimed for any subject.” PESA currently has 11 MSW interns, 8 BSW interns and 26 academic tutors providing services to students on 7 campuses. Your continued support enables us to provide badly needed services to young people throughout the region. ■
If you’d like to support PESA’s many social and educational initiatives, please contact us.