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MADISON, Wis. — As kids and teens are facing more mental health challenges, educators are learning new ways to support their students.

In Wisconsin, the biggest resource for school staff is the Department of Public Instruction’s Division of School Services, Prevention and Wellness.

Jessica Frain and Libby Strunz are school mental health consultants at the DPI.

They spend most of their time connecting with district staff, building plans and researching new ways to support children’s mental health. They often attend and present at national conferences.

“I get to connect with some of the national experts in this field, and really get to know what’s on the cusp of best practices out there and have the opportunity to bring that back to Wisconsin,” Frain said.

Their work has never been more important. Wisconsin students are struggling. They’re not the only ones.

A study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found 37% of high school students experienced poor mental health during the pandemic.

In that same study, 44% of high school students reported feeling sad or hopeless nearly every day and losing interest in some of their hobbies or relationships.

“We have definitely seen rates of mental health challenges increasing since the COVID-19 pandemic,” Frain said. “However, those trends have been going on for much longer than that. Anyone who’s worked in the school districts, or works with young people, or even has young people in their families, can attest to that.”

Every other year, the CDC partners with states to administer the Youth Risk Behavior Survey. It takes the pulse of how students are feeling and what challenges they’re facing.

The most recent data available is from the 2021 survey. The statistics in Wisconsin are staggering.

“Over half of our students who took that survey self-report that they struggle with symptoms of anxiety. We know that over a third self-reported that they struggle with symptoms of depression. And about 18% report that they’ve seriously considered suicide,” Strunz said. “[It’s] a really concerning picture of the mental health crisis that our youth are facing.”

Strunz often tells people to think about the young people in their own lives to put those numbers into perspective.

“If you think of 10 teenagers that you know, half of them statistically are struggling with anxiety. A third may be struggling with depression. And two out of those 10 may be struggling with serious thoughts of suicide,” Strunz said.

The team at the DPI is trying to change that. However, they’ve also changed strategy.

“Historically, we’ve really honed in on and focused on some of the students that are really struggling the most,” Frain said. “However, the numbers are showing we have a lot more students who are struggling. So we can’t really take that traditional approach anymore.”

The new approach is called the Wisconsin School Mental Health Framework. It was developed with the National Center for School Mental Health and released in 2021.

“The Wisconsin School Mental Health Framework is made up of six components, and these components are all interconnected,” Frain said.

The six steps of the framework are:

• Continuum of supports: having consistent offerings for every student, not just what Strunz called “random acts of mental health”
• Collaboration: getting schools, community resource organizations and families to work together
• Needs Assessment and Resource Mapping: identifying what the greatest needs are and where services are available
• Referral Pathways: being able to send students to the appropriate providers outside the school system when necessary
• Sustainability: ensuring that these systems can continue for the student, and the staff won’t get burnt out
• Data: collecting data so they can identify what’s working

Frain and Strunz work with school district staff trying to improve their students’ mental health. 

“A really key part of that framework is that universal level of support that’s preventative and proactive and benefits every single student and adult in the building,” Strunz said. “That can look like social-emotional learning, it can look like mental health literacy, it can look like work to reduce stigma surrounding mental health, suicide prevention, bullying prevention and a myriad of other things.”

DPI consultants have seen this guidance work for school districts. That’s especially true with collaboration. Frain said it’s making a difference for students all over Wisconsin.

“It’s really beautiful to see across the state that this is starting to open up,” Frain said. “We’re seeing that communities are really coming together and wrapping around our students versus trying to do things separately.”

If a child you love is struggling with mental illness, click here for a list of resources from the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health.