State seeks to speed credentials for 10,000 direly needed school mental health counselors
Los Angeles Times / January 5, 2022
Confronted with a shortage of school mental health counselors, the state Department of Education is seeking to bring 10,000 more professionals to campuses at a time when federal public health officials are calling for action to address the nation’s growing youth mental health crisis.
Dr. Jonathan Goldfinger, a pediatrician and chief executive of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services in Los Angeles County, joined Thurmond to speak about the pandemic’s effects on children and how it has led to increased misbehavior in schools.
“We’re seeing the effects of trauma getting literally underneath kids’ skin and manifesting in behaviors in our classrooms, in our homes, in our communities, in our clinics, that we’ve really never seen before,” Goldfinger said. “We have had in the United States a national emerging emergency or pandemic of mental illness in our youth because we have not invested previously in our workforce. We have really treated mental health differently than physical health and acted like it wasn’t as important, when underneath it all, mental health is foundational to physical health.”
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