Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But more than that, we need investment in mental health care in a way we have never done before, not during the pandemic or before the pandemic. I really like the idea of giving better training to PCPs, school counselors, teachers and also training parents, that's such an important piece.

IMO it's not that we need to train counselors and teachers--we see the mental health problems, but we are not qualified to treat long-standing issues. What is needed is more counselors, social workers, and therapists in the school buildings to provide the support that we already know students need but can't offer because of a lack of personnel.

Stop expecting schools to replace parents. Mental health is not a school issue and parents need to get their kids treatmen.

OP here. It's interesting you think a child's teacher has no role in supporting their students' mental health. It doesn't mean they provide therapy, it does mean that when they interact with the child they can do so knowing what will help them progress. I agree, we need to do a better job of helping our society's most vulnerable and not rely on teachers to provide therapy, but this idea that teachers can't even bother to think about how to meet children's needs if those needs go beyond a typically developing child with no disabilities, well all I can say is thankfully my child's teacher does not view her job that way.

Anonymous wrote:We also need insurance companies to reimburse mental health providers at higher rates so more of them can afford to accept insurance, mental health urgent care and walk in assessment facilities, more options for intensive levels of care (PHP and IOP), and a parallel system of primary care/mental health care so that at each stage of transition, kids have mental health support already in place.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

But more than that, we need investment in mental health care in a way we have never done before, not during the pandemic or before the pandemic. I really like the idea of giving better training to PCPs, school counselors, teachers and also training parents, that's such an important piece.

IMO it's not that we need to train counselors and teachers--we see the mental health problems, but we are not qualified to treat long-standing issues. What is needed is more counselors, social workers, and therapists in the school buildings to provide the support that we already know students need but can't offer because of a lack of personnel.

Stop expecting schools to replace parents. Mental health is not a school issue and parents need to get their kids treatmen.

Anonymous wrote:We also need insurance companies to reimburse mental health providers at higher rates so more of them can afford to accept insurance, mental health urgent care and walk in assessment facilities, more options for intensive levels of care (PHP and IOP), and a parallel system of primary care/mental health care so that at each stage of transition, kids have mental health support already in place.

Anonymous wrote:

But more than that, we need investment in mental health care in a way we have never done before, not during the pandemic or before the pandemic. I really like the idea of giving better training to PCPs, school counselors, teachers and also training parents, that's such an important piece.

IMO it's not that we need to train counselors and teachers--we see the mental health problems, but we are not qualified to treat long-standing issues. What is needed is more counselors, social workers, and therapists in the school buildings to provide the support that we already know students need but can't offer because of a lack of personnel.

Anonymous wrote:You are rambling about multiple issues. Masking is not your child’s problem.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We also need insurance companies to reimburse mental health providers at higher rates so more of them can afford to accept insurance, mental health urgent care and walk in assessment facilities, more options for intensive levels of care (PHP and IOP), and a parallel system of primary care/mental health care so that at each stage of transition, kids have mental health support already in place.

This. My kid is really struggling and is now seeing her therapist twice a week at $280 per session. Out of network and insurance only covers $80 so we are out of pocket $400 per week. We are really lucky we can afford this.

Anonymous wrote:We also need insurance companies to reimburse mental health providers at higher rates so more of them can afford to accept insurance, mental health urgent care and walk in assessment facilities, more options for intensive levels of care (PHP and IOP), and a parallel system of primary care/mental health care so that at each stage of transition, kids have mental health support already in place.

Anonymous wrote:

But more than that, we need investment in mental health care in a way we have never done before, not during the pandemic or before the pandemic. I really like the idea of giving better training to PCPs, school counselors, teachers and also training parents, that's such an important piece.

IMO it's not that we need to train counselors and teachers--we see the mental health problems, but we are not qualified to treat long-standing issues. What is needed is more counselors, social workers, and therapists in the school buildings to provide the support that we already know students need but can't offer because of a lack of personnel.

But more than that, we need investment in mental health care in a way we have never done before, not during the pandemic or before the pandemic. I really like the idea of giving better training to PCPs, school counselors, teachers and also training parents, that's such an important piece.

Contracting with big and profitable companies like Cigna, Aetna and Blue Cross Blue Shield shouldn’t amount to charity work. Yet economic realities make it so. Nationwide, insurance payment rates for primary care physicians (who consistently rank among the lowest paid doctors) are almost 24 percent higher than for mental health practitioners — including psychiatrists. In 11 states, that gap widened to more than 50 percent, a report from the Bowman Family Foundation noted in 2019.

That discrepancy points not only to the historical devaluing of psychiatry as a discipline, it also sheds light on a major problem with the relative status of different kinds of interventions. In the health-care world, where values are defined by insurance company reimbursement rates, talk — the essential component of thoughtful medication management, therapy or counseling, and, for that matter, any successful form of healing — has long been compensated at rates that trail far behind those that insurers pay for medical procedures. “Our system is set up so that I get paid more to see a child and do an asthma breathing test than I do to spend an hour with the family of a child who might be thinking about hurting themselves,” noted Chung of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

That dollars-and-cents reality plays an enormous role not only in who gets care, but in who can afford to provide it, and how. Mental health parity laws adopted over the past 26 years were supposed to directly address this issue. But the insurance industry has been almost diabolically adept at skirting those laws; as one of the largest contributors to PACs, political parties and candidates, they’re not likely to face real pressure to change anytime soon. Another seemingly obvious big fix for the supply-chain issues plaguing children’s mental health care — tuition reimbursement incentive programs for medical students who choose to specialize in child psychiatry and are willing to commit to working with underserved populations (a definition that really ought to include all families that can’t afford to shell out hundreds of dollars for every out-of-pocket visit) — has never worked in the past. And even if those programs were to be expanded and improved, they’d take so long to show results that they’d do nothing for the children who are struggling right now.

Fortunately, families don’t have to wait. Over the past decade, a growing number of frustrated practitioners and researchers have taken matters into their own hands, creating and often collaborating on low-cost solutions that work around the current system. At base, they all center on creating a new mental health workforce, which means training the people who are already on the ground day-to-day with kids — primary care providers, school nurses and counselors, teachers, and, yes, parents — in elemental forms of mental health care.