Researchers at Vanderbilt University have been granted $3.2 million from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to research children’s mental health, according to the university.
“A four-year, $3.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health will support the research of Carolyn Heinrich, University Distinguished Professor of Leadership, Policy and Organizations, and Melinda Buntin, University Distinguished Professor of Health Policy, into how school-based health interventions affect children’s mental health and education outcomes,” Vanderbilt announced last month. “Schools are serving children with ever-increasing mental health needs, which were amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic. U.S. public schools serve as the primary entry point to mental health services for children, and school-based health centers, or SBHCs, increasingly are a ‘medical home’ for vulnerable children.”
The grant was handed down after a Vanderbilt poll showed that more than one-third of parents in Tennessee say they are worried about their child’s mental health and the risk of suicide. The mental health of their children ranked second on the list of parental concerns, behind quality education.
“In total, more than 20% of parents reported concerns their child had undiagnosed anxiety, nearly 14% said they were concerned their child had undiagnosed depression, and more than 11% were concerned their child had undiagnosed ADHD/ADD. In 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the lives of children and families across the state, 14% reported concerns about undiagnosed anxiety, and less than 7% reported concerns about ADHD/ADD,” according to the study results.
In the wake of a mass shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, the General Assembly, with the help of Gov. Bill Lee (R), passed a law that will, in part, address children’s mental health. That law, called The SAVE Act, requires a Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services member to be consulted by a new state-level school safety team as Tennessee implements new universal school safety measures.
While some, including Lee himself, have suggested that gun control is the solution to school shootings, others disagree.
“I would be willing to take a look at the current process we have for involuntary surrender of your firearms due to mental health issues that would go through the court process and due process, just to make sure that process is functioning efficiently,” State Rep. Scott Cepicky (R-Culleoka) said May 9 on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
“And that’s the extent that I’m willing to look at this. I do not believe guns are the problem. I do believe that this is a mental health issue. I think it’s a mental health issue that we’ve self-created this crisis,” he said. “The places where people would go for mental health help have all been evaporated and gone. And now we’re trying to medicate people back to mental health, and we may have some issues with that.”
In fact, mental health is a growing concern for all Americans.
A Kaiser Family Foundation poll from 2022 found that 90 percent of Americans think mental health issues are a “crisis.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter.
Photo “Sad Child” by 🇸🇮 Janko Ferlič.
