Students’ mental health challenges persist — Bay Area schools are doing something about it

Sophia, an eighth grader at Monroe Middle School in San Jose, was trying to get through her first class, but her anxiety was making it impossible to calm down. She couldn’t focus on the lesson and worried she would get so upset that she’d cause a scene.

So she asked her teacher for permission to leave and headed to the wellness center down the hall for a 15-minute break. Here, the lights were dimmed, peaceful piano music was playing, and a counselor was available. She could take her feelings out on the punching bag in the corner, play with kinetic sand or paint a picture for the Art Wall.

Sophia situated herself at the bracelet-making station. Her tension and anxiety started to ease.

“Coming here and having my own space and having my own alone time, that helps me calm down, and then I’m ready to go back,” said Sophia, who asked that her last name not be used.

This space is one of 19 wellness centers throughout Santa Clara County elementary, middle and high schools, providing students with a place to de-stress and learn coping strategies to help them get through the day. And it’s part of a growing trend as school districts across the Bay Area turn to a range of strategies to address a staggering crisis impacting young people around the country.

Nearly 30% of teenagers experience episodes of poor mental health each month, and more than 40% have persistent feelings of sadness, according to a decade-long survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease and Prevention released in 2021. The isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic magnified the problem.

“With the separation and schools closed, we had already seen alarming upticks in social anxiety, anxiety writ large, early indications of depression and higher rates of suicide,” said Mary Ann Dewan, the superintendent of schools for Santa Clara County. “We saw an even greater opportunity to ensure that the school was centered as a place of wellness.”

Students can drop by centers before, during or after school or sign up for therapy sessions. Each space is designed to be a “Zen Den,” a calming environment where students can focus on their wellbeing by participating in self-care and relaxation.

School staff members also lead activities that range from bringing therapy animals to campus to rock painting to yoga classes. They provide mentorship when kids need an adult to talk to.

“A lot of kids have this perception that school isn’t going to help me at all. I do think that a wellness center allows them to see how the school is really there to serve you,” said Daisy Urisar Esquivel, the wellness center liaison at San Jose’s Monroe Middle School.

Teachers also benefit from these spaces. Now when a kid needs a moment to reset, they can be sent to a safe, supervised space instead of having to stick it out in class or get in trouble for potentially disrupting a class.

“As adults, we’re able to take breaks if we’re feeling kind of stressed, right? So it just makes sense why students should be able to take a break when they’re stressed out, when they’re anxious or when they’re not feeling up for it,” said Angelique Guzman, the wellness center specialist at Monroe.

By the fall of 2022, the centers already had received more than 10,000 student visits since the first ones opened fall 2021, and more than 97% of visitors said they would like to return.

While wellness centers have found success in Santa Clara County, other methods are being tried in the East Bay to alleviate mental health burdens among students.

At Oakland Unified, students voluntarily log online check-ins about their emotional state. Each week, kindergarten through 12th graders log into their student portals, either through their phones or school computers, and click on the Sown to Grow platform. The program screens for mental health issues by prompting kids to answer on a scale of 1 to 5 how they’re feeling that day and why.

The online resource utilizes AI to comb through student responses and flag any alarming text, such as suicidal ideation or self-harm tendencies, to teachers and school counselors. If a child has consistently low responses, it also triggers a response from a school administrator.

Students can track their own responses from week to week to see if they have experienced mood swings or made improvements to their mental health. So far, more than 80% of Oakland Unified schools have implemented the new tool.

Mental health experts said students will have better health outcomes if schools can catch and treat early signs of mental illness.

“School is a really important window of opportunity to identify kids that are at risk and reach out and try and link them to mental health services if they need it,” said Dr. Michele Berk, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavior sciences at Stanford University. “Having more resources, making them easy for kids to access, reducing any stigma to accessing those services, that would all go a long way.”

In late January, Kaiser Permanente granted Oakland Unified $9 million to spend on school health centers, social emotional learning initiatives and mental health screenings across the district’s 77 schools over the next three years. The district has also started a peer mentorship program where upperclassmen can mentor freshman and sophomore students.

Last year, then-sophomore Jose Alcantar struggled to keep his grades up at Oakland High School, but he made it his routine to go to the library after school and find support from other students until he felt confident in class again.

This year, he wanted to be the kind of student others could rely on for advice, so he became a peer mentor. Alcantar meets with students after school three days a week and guides mentees through whatever may be on their minds — academic challenges, problems at home, mental health issues, you name it.

“It could be a struggle for some kids to feel comfortable enough to talk to someone about their problems,” he said. “Being from Oakland, there’s obviously students here struggling, and it’s nice knowing we can help. As students, we relate with other students more so than adults.”