As students across Virginia get ready to go back to school, some will be met with a new required course this year: mental health. State law now mandates that mental health education be incorporated into the curriculum for physical education and health for students in the 9th and 10th grade. Virginia and New York are the only two states in the U.S. to require mental health education in public schools.
The move is to change the public discourse on the notion of mental health. Unfortunately, one in five people between ages 13 and 18 suffer from some type of mental illness, according to data from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). Furthermore, 50 percent of all lifetime cases of a disorder begin by age 14, and 75 percent by age 24.
“There’s so many misperceptions [sic] we need to correct them and one way to do that is start early and often talking about this issue in schools,” said Tyler Corson with NAMI’s Virginia Beach chapter, according to a report from WAVY.
NAMI is also one of the organizations that state lawmakers are requiring that school leaders consult to prepare a curriculum for mental health education.
Dr. Aaron Spence, superintendent of Virginia Beach City Public Schools said that his division’s schools are adding four behavior interventionists this year.
“These are people who, when a child is dealing with some significant mental health issues, can go in, work with them, work with the teacher and work with their family to try to redirect that behavior,” Spence explained.
While the immediate needs have been addressed with schools adding counselors and other types of interventionists, the Commonwealth is still working on the long-term plan for mental health education. Officials from the Virginia Department of Education are still in the process of developing recommendations on revisions to the standards for mental health awareness and education and schools, but no timeline has been set.