“Directing Change gives young people the opportunity to speak openly, support one another and help shape school communities where every student feels valued, understood and encouraged to reach out for help,” Riverside County Superintendent of Schools Edwin Gomez said. “Recognizing our students for expanding mental health awareness is a meaningful opportunity to show how much we value their powerful insights and inspiring creativity.”

Selected entries from the 2026 contest will be shown after a Red Carpet arrival, beginning shortly before 5 p.m. Wednesday at the Fox Performing Arts Center in downtown Riverside.

The competition is held annually as part of the “Youth Creating Change” program. Students are invited to produce vignettes, comparable to public service announcements, that are 30 to 60 seconds long.

A total 213 entries from two dozen schools and nonprofit organizations countywide were submitted this year, according to the Riverside University Health System, which sponsors the contests.

“Supporting the well-being of Riverside County’s young people is one of the most meaningful investments we can make in our future,” Board of Supervisors Chair Karen Spiegel said. “Directing Change gives students a powerful platform to share their voices, uplift one another and inspire change through creativity and compassion. These films reflect the insight, courage and heart of our youth, reminding us that honest conversations build stronger schools, healthier communities and a hopeful future.”

Along with the regular categories focused on suicide prevention and mental health awareness, this year’s event established two additional categories — substance abuse and Boys & Young Men Media Challenge — according to RUHS.

“By encouraging honest storytelling and peer connection, the program helps foster empathy, awareness and a culture of care among youth,” the agency stated.

The event is slated to conclude about 8 p.m. Wednesday.

More information is available at hopeandjustice.art/riversidecounty.

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“We’ll stop during the holidays and then resume after winter break,” Activities Director Jennifer Garcia said. “We have a variety of activities to offer. Some like sports and everyone is into being crafty right now.”

This current interest in arts and crafts convinced the staff to offer a unique art activity for its first Youth Night of the school year, held Sept. 7. Participants were encouraged to come by anytime during the scheduled two-hour event that started at 5 p.m.

Offered an array of pre-printed pictures on black velvet backgrounds, ranging from nature and animals to space and fantasy figures, artists were given brightly colored markers to personalize their creations.

Several young people were joined by Parks and Recreation staff members to dialogue and create during the event. Light snacks and drinks were also provided.

“We wanted the kids to have something to do after tutoring or after school,” Garcia said.

Recreation Aide Michael Durrett said he enjoys overseeing some of the sports activities with the youths. “This gives them a reason to get out of the house and be with friends,” he said.

Nephreteri Salinas, 17, was using her own artist’s sketchbook to freehand some artwork. Sports Coordinator Steve Lopez said she has been one of the regulars since the program was launched last spring.

“I do enjoy being here,” she said. A senior at San Jacinto High School, she developed a strong interest in art during the summer and is enrolled in a draw and paint class at school this year.

The Youth Night also helps out families who can use the time to work on their own projects at home or run errands and more, knowing their children are in a safe and secure environment.

“I’m really enjoying myself,” Akwaalimay Resvaloso, 13, said, as she continued to color a jungle scene with a baby leopard.

Wayne Walker Calderon, 14, is a freshman at San Jacinto High and said he thinks the program is “kind of rad” and allows for interaction with others while doing fun activities.

“We really like that we can offer students a place to go after school instead of having nothing to do,” Parks and Recreation Director Andy Silvas said. “This gives them an outlet where they can meet, relax and have some fun.”

Collaborating with Soboba Tribal TANF for a few upcoming events, as well as other Soboba departments, there is a huge selection for participants to choose from in the coming months. Youth Nights in September will offer a bingo night, pool days, sports such as volleyball and basketball and gourd decorating with TANF.

Scheduled for October is a board game night, canvas painting and pumpkin carving with TANF. There will be no Youth Night on Monday, Oct. 31 due to the Halloween holiday but staff will be handing out candy so kids are being encouraged to stop by.

Garcia said there is a movie night planned for November where they will utilize their popcorn machine, which is always a favorite with the kids. Fall harvest arts and crafts with TANF will be offered toward the end of the current session.

“We always get at least a handful of kids, but we’ve had up to 18 to 20 before so we know it can grow,” Garcia said.

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The study was led by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. The findings are published in the Journal of Migration and Health.

The researchers conducted confidential interviews with 46 immigrant adolescent youth who had migrated overland from Latin America to the U.S through the U.S. Southern border as unaccompanied minors and had resettled in New York City,  where they were living in a variety of living arrangements: with parents,  with other family members (but not parents), or without any family members. They were recruited to the CAMINANDO study through three NYC community-based organizations offering services to migrant teens. All youth had been exposed to violence and came to the U.S. from households with limited financial resources.

Across the three resettlement household types, youth expressed desire to find better opportunities in the U.S. and highlighted the importance of finding support from adults—and for the group of youth who attend school—having supportive teachers and counselors. All groups experienced similar levels of life satisfaction.

Youth living with parents said they could rely on their parents to cover their basic needs and provide advice that empowered them to focus on their goals and to cope with daily hassles, possibly enhancing their outlook on life. On the other hand, these youth were more likely to experience a problematic level of perceived stress—potentially due to the challenges of readjusting to new family dynamics after separation. This group expressed greater interest in pursuing higher education, potentially influenced by a younger age of entry into the U.S. education system, their parents’ having migrated before them, and the higher prevalence of females in the group (generally, females express more interest in higher education than males).

Youth living with siblings or other relatives saw them as parental figures and seemed to benefit from these relationships through material support and in navigating the challenges of a new country, establishing friendships through their siblings and other relatives, and coping with the loss of what they left behind. Compared to other groups, this group was more likely to have good friends and lower perceived stress.

Youth living without family were less likely to express positive affect, had less resilience, and needed to expend greater efforts to mobilize social supports compared to those living with family members. Youth who left their family behind and did not live with relatives in the U.S. were more likely to express feeling lonely, in part because they lacked a caretaker. They relied on support from other youth like them and sometimes from older immigrant co-workers. Youth living in shelters or communal living found support from staff and counselors.

Manuela Orjuela-Grimm, MD, study first author and assistant professor of epidemiology (and pediatrics) at Columbia Mailman School: “The lives of unaccompanied minor migrants living in the U.S. doesn’t fit a single mold. Their emotional health and resilience are shaped by their US living arrangements, especially by the presence of parents and other family members who provide social support. Our study is unique in its ability to interview youth not living with parents, and especially to be able to include the voices of youth who are not in school, as these groups have been excluded from prior studies on migrant youth. Understanding the impact of living arrangements can guide the development of programs and resources to better meet their needs and support their healthy development.” 

Study co-authors include Silvia Bhatt-Carreño, Maria Castro, Hector Pinilla, Daniela Rodriguez, Ambar Ruiz, Michelle Valentin, Arielle Richey Levine, Rossmary Gonzaleza, Marisa Zuleta, Marisa Pharel, and Paola Medina, in the Migration and Nutrition Epidemiology (MaNE) group at Columbia Mailman; Alexandra Restrepo Henao at Columbia Mailman and the Universidad de Antioquia in Colombia;  Maria Marti Castaner at the Danish Research Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Health, University of Copenhagen; and Roberto Lewis-Fernández at New York State Psychiatric Institute.

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Funding for the study was supported by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (grant P2CHD058486), awarded to the Columbia Population Research Center, Columbia University Global Mental Health Council Grant 2019-02, the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS) at Columbia University, and the Oak Foundation. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or other funders.

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The phone rings at least three times a day with the same message from a distraught parent: my daughter needs someone to talk to (and it’s usually a daughter in middle school or high school). I ask what’s going on. They say she wants therapy, she is depressed and anxious. I say there is a wait list. For the first time in my social work career, doing private practice psychotherapy from home, there is a demand no one saw coming. 

It’s tantalizing to be valued suddenly in a field where starting salaries can, in some cases, be no higher than $35,000 a year. But it also underscores a crisis with no end in sight.

As the Surgeon General recently warned, children and teens are in trouble. Emergency room visits for suicide attempts are up more than 50% in girls over the last two years and 4% in boys. Shocking as these statistics are, they came as no surprise to mental health professionals working with teens. The question is: what will the country do about it?

Burning out on childhood 

Our children make up the centerpiece of our lives and they have inadvertently become the subjects of emotional trauma right before our eyes. My colleague, Dr. Amanda Jacobs, an adolescent medicine specialist, told me that she believes girls with underlying anxieties and insecurities that bubbled up to the surface during lockdowns and other pandemic disruptions are now more fragile than ever.

This fits with a long-held model in our field: issues are rarely caused by just one trigger. They culminate from a hit to self-esteem combined with external (say, viral) or environmental stressors.  

Say you’re an average kid with average grades and a couple of friends, and some history of depression and insomnia. Your parents are out scrambling to make a living and then, boom, add a global crisis and a family tragedy of some sort, and what is the outcome? It’s the intersection of distress and heredity at the most critical time of their lives. While it may not reach the level of PTSD, it drives a new kind of desperation for support.

Many of our children are living in a state of panic. Worry, languishing and depression would be putting it mildly. The kids I see have been flattened. Lifeless, listless, bored, you name it.  I’m surprised there isn’t a new diagnosis called “childhood burnout.” This seems to alternate with the other less passive states of “screw this” and “there’s no point.” Like going from sad to angry, all within an hour.

As parents, therapists, teachers and community leaders, we do not want them to go to school full of anxiety and dread. Stir in the worries of school shooters, climate change and the politicization of vaccines and masks, and the sense of cold cynicism is amplified: What next?  Why me?  Who cares? Where is my future? Vocabulary fails us. “Empty” is a word I hear from a lot of teenagers, and I am still struggling to understand it. “Empty” goes to numbing, cutting, searching, not feeling, wanting to feel, disassociating and clients begging for a diagnosis. What is this uncomfortable feeling? Is it existential dread or something unknowable and unnamable?  

People blame social media. But that is only the delivery system, not the core problem. Yes, girls are inundated with images of perfection, and it makes them feel bad about themselves and their bodies. But there may be more to this.

My colleagues point to isolation. What actually happens when the dynamics of a family are locked down? I think we all know, even before the Surgeon General told us, that the answer is not good. 

I had a middle school client who stacked several books on top of her chair, with a hat on top of that, and just lay down on her bed every day. Only after three weeks did the teacher catch on.  Zoom school and Zoom fatigue are unlike other maladies. They just make you dull. Perhaps the authority figures were too zoomed out to notice.

A waiting game 

While it’s important to have the Surgeon General call attention to the crisis facing our kids, where are the policies that would help them get care? 

The gap between insurance companies’ policies and the need for support has widened. Most of my clients are low- and middle-income families who could not afford mental health care without their hard-earned benefits, so I continue to respect that. Practitioners who take only private clients charge double what insurance pays us. One company that serves a wide range of state employees, including many teachers, has paid $67 per session for the last 20 years, while private practitioners may charge $125 to $350 per 50-minute session.

If you happen to need a prescription along with that, an initial psychiatric evaluation can start as high as $650 out of pocket. Finding a psychiatrist who takes insurance is considered a feat.

Because insurance sets rates so low and requires so much time and paperwork, more therapists, understandably, choose to go private, putting more pressure on the demand. In addition, “prior authorizations, lack of reimbursement, constant resubmissions to obtain payment for service” create a massive barrier for therapists and clients alike, said New York therapist Jennifer Rowe.

When the incentive is the bottom line, and not care, everyone suffers. Health care becomes a privilege, not a right. The neediest get the least help. Most of my peers are “out of network” because they themselves can’t live on the fees the network pays. The system favors those able to pay out of pocket. Everyone else waits, often for months.

I received a call from a girl who was suicidal, self-harming, and deeply depressed. The insurance would not cover the immediate or long-term therapeutic care because of a convoluted loophole through which her policy was carved out to a subcontractor that denied the claims for no apparent reason. As if suicidal ideation wasn’t reason enough.

I spent 10 hours on the phone to no avail. The time I spend talking, arguing, pleading with insurance companies is unpaid. I saw her for free. For using 30 years of experience and skills to intervene in this young life, making a judgment call to her parents to have her hospitalized, I was reimbursed zero. What was I going to do, drop her in the middle of it all as if I were shopping and my credit card was inexplicably denied? 

My job is not for the avoidant — it is hands-on, day after day. Insurers slow down the process by micromanaging our decisions, cutting back on covered services and making us justify continued care. They actually call you, mid-treatment, to say, are you sure this is necessary? Or more commonly, can you fill out this form and fax it, like it’s 1990, to show that you want to continue?  Finding the right person is like finding a contact lens on the pavement.

Like nurses, teachers, clergy, and doctors, we do it because we care. We have kids of our own. 

The changes we need

While the pandemic has triggered today’s mental health crisis, its roots run deep. “We ignored and stigmatized mental health for too long,” said my colleague Gayle Skovron, a licensed clinical social worker in Nyack, New York. “This is the fallout of torn families, lack of community and greed.” 

With this massive break from normalcy, no policy changes were made besides a brief covering of copays and telehealth. Max Benezra of South Shore Counseling on Long Island told me, “We experienced such an increase in referrals during the pandemic, especially with teens, that we hired more therapists and still did not have enough therapists to meet the demand.”  

The changes we need can be innovative if we have the will: offer incentives to therapists who take insurance, demand that insurance companies adjust rates for the 21st century, do away with middlemen, reduce time-consuming billing hassles, and give more discretion over treatment plans to the mental health care professionals themselves.

Our teenagers are in desperate need of help. They feel lost, tired and alone. We could do so much more. Yet we wait.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — A panel of U.S. health advisers on Tuesday endorsed kid-size doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine, moving the U.S. closer to beginning vaccinations in children ages 5 to 11.

A Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted unanimously with one abstention that the vaccine’s benefits in preventing COVID-19 in that age group outweigh any potential risks — including a heart-related side effect that’s been very rare in teens and young adults who get a much higher dose.

The FDA isn’t bound by the panel’s recommendation and is expected to make its own decision within days.

If the FDA authorizes the kid-size doses, there’s still another step: Next week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will have to decide whether to recommend the shots and which youngsters should get them.

While children are at lower risk of severe COVID-19 than older people, 5- to 11-year-olds still have faced substantial illness — including over 8,300 hospitalizations reported, about a third requiring intensive care, and nearly 100 deaths.

The dose for young children is just one-third of the Pfizer shot already recommended for everyone 12 and older. Moderna also is studying its vaccine for young children.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Kid-size doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine may be getting closer as government advisers on Tuesday began deliberating whether there’s enough evidence that the shots are safe and effective for 5- to 11-year-olds.

A study of elementary schoolchildren found the Pfizer shots are nearly 91% effective at preventing symptomatic infection — even though the youngsters received just a third of the dose given to teens and adults.

In a preliminary analysis last week, Food and Drug Administration reviewers said that protection would “clearly outweigh” the risk of a very rare side effect in almost all scenarios of the pandemic. Now FDA’s advisers are combing through that data to see if they agree.

If the FDA authorizes the kid-size doses, there’s still another step: Next week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will have to decide whether to recommend the shots and which youngsters should get them.

While children are at lower risk of severe COVID-19 than older people, 5- to 11-year-olds still have faced substantial illness — including over 8,300 hospitalizations, about a third requiring intensive care, and nearly 100 deaths, FDA vaccine chief Dr. Peter Marks told the advisory panel.

Also, “infections have caused many school closures and disrupted the education and socialization of children,” he said.

“I want to acknowledge the fact that there are strong feelings” among the public for and against child vaccinations, Marks added, noting that the discussion would be on scientific data “not about vaccine mandates, which are left to other entities outside of FDA.”

Full-strength shots made by Pfizer and its partner BioNTech already are recommended for everyone 12 and older but pediatricians and many parents are clamoring for protection for younger children. The extra-contagious delta variant has caused an alarming rise in pediatric infections — and families are frustrated with school quarantines and having to say no to sleepovers and other rites of childhood to keep the virus at bay.

States are getting ready to roll out shots for little arms — in special orange-capped vials to distinguish them from adult vaccine — as soon as the government gives the OK. More than 25,000 pediatricians and other primary care providers have signed up so far to offer vaccination.

Pfizer’s study tracked 2,268 children ages 5 to 11 who got two shots three weeks apart of either a placebo or the kid dose. Vaccinated youngsters developed levels of virus-fighting antibodies just as strong as teens and young adults who got the full-strength shots.

And so far, 16 kids given dummy shots developed symptomatic COVID-19 compared to three vaccinated youngsters, meaning the vaccine was nearly 91% effective. Most of the study data was collected in the U.S. during August and September as the delta variant surged.

The kid dosage also proved safe, with similar or fewer temporary side effects — such as sore arms, fever or achiness — that teens experience. At FDA’s request, Pfizer more recently enrolled another 2,300 youngsters into the study, and preliminary safety data has shown no red flags.

The study isn’t large enough to detect any extremely rare side effects, such as the heart inflammation that occasionally occurs after the second dose, mostly in young men and teen boys.

The FDA’s panel of independent experts will weigh whether Pfizer’s shot is likely to prevent more COVID-19 hospitalizations in young kids than might be caused by that rare side effect.

The FDA analysis calculated that in most scenarios of the continuing pandemic, the vaccine would prevent roughly 200 to 250 COVID-19 hospitalizations for every 1 million youngsters vaccinated, with about 58 hospitalizations for the heart inflammation. The side effect risk is based on levels in teens, and Pfizer expects it to be far lower in youngsters getting the kid-size dose.

Moderna also is studying its vaccine in young children.

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“Childhood adversity has consistently been identified as a powerful determinant of physical and mental health,” said Katherine M. Keyes, PhD, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School, and a senior author. “Our research is a novel synthesis of evidence to estimate the scope of health burden and preventable mortality. Incorporating a life-course perspective, the findings indicate that childhood adversity is closely linked to morbidity and mortality in the U.S. and a preventable determinant of mortality.”

Using the databases PsycINFO and MEDLINE, the researchers reviewed metanalyses in publications through mid-November 2019 to investigate associations between childhood adversity and morbidity outcomes. The prevalence of childhood adversity was extracted from the National Comorbidity Survey Adolescent Supplement, a population-representative survey of children and their caregivers.

A total of 19 meta-analyses with 20, 654, 832 participants were reviewed. Childhood adversity (CA) accounted for approximately 439,072 deaths annually in the U.S. through associations with leading causes of death including heart disease, cancer, and suicide, or 15 percent of the 2,854,838 total number of U.S. mortalities in 2019. In addition, CA was associated with millions of cases of unhealthy behaviors and disease markers, including more than 22 million cases of sexually transmitted infections, 21 million cases of illicit drug use, 19 million cases of elevated inflammation, and more than 10 million cases each of smoking and physical inactivity. 

Exposure to one or more experiences of adversity before the age of 18 years was considered and also included abuse, neglect, family violence, and economic adversity. The greatest proportion of outcomes attributable to CA were for suicide attempts and sexually transmitted infections, for which adversity accounted for up to 38 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

“These findings give greater urgency to recent efforts to screen for early adversity in pediatric primary care as a way of identifying children at risk for poor health and delivering early interventions,” said Keyes. “Considering childhood adversity as a preventable contributing factor to early mortality may help to shift action and funding into the prevention of adversity.”

Keys adds: ”Our study adds to a growing literature demonstrating that social determinants of health are important to consider as preventable causes of death. By reframing how we think about the causes of death, the resources available to address population health may be allocated more effectively. The prevention of childhood adversity and the intervention on pathways that tie these experiences to elevated disease risk should be considered a critical public health priority.”


Co-authors include Lucinda Rachel Grummitt, Noah Kreski, Stephanie Gyuri Kim and Jonathan Platt, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health; and Katie McLaughlin, Harvard University.

The study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (grants MH103291, MH106482, MH119194).

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Soboba is scheduled to host a competition on Feb. 20. The only eligibility requirements to participate on the co-ed team are to be an enrolled member of Soboba or a community member between the ages of 5 and 18.

Head Coach Ricardo Macias, who is the Lead Recreation Aide for Soboba Parks & Recreation, said the sport had a team last year and about 10 to 15 members of this year’s team are returning cross country runners.

“I love that this sport brings kids out of the house and participating in something, especially given the pandemic we’re in,” Macias said. “We are focusing on their endurance and stamina, making sure they’re running and trying to progress distance-wise each and every practice.”

Practices are scheduled twice a week at the Sports Complex at 4 p.m. so as not to interfere with school class time, which is currently online for all students in the area. Macias said learning good form is the goal of watching them closely during practice sessions with the help of assistant coaches.

“We like to make sure the kids are running with a good posture and making sure their heads or shoulders aren’t bobbling around,” he said. “For the little ones, it comes so natural for them because they’re still in tune with their primitive instincts.”

During a recent practice, the group was guided through some warmup, stretching moves and then divided by age group with the younger runners from ages 5 to 7 running around the perimeter of the softball field several times. The older athletes had to run around the entire complex about five times, with each full lap measuring about a half mile.

Suwoswush Resvaloso, 6, Tónla Hurtado Laurenzana, and Kali Red Fox were among the younger runners whose energy and enthusiasm kept them going strong even after a few laps around the field.

“My mom wants me to start running with her and wants me to get stronger,” Kali, 7, said.

Tónla’s mom, Sasha Hurtado, said this is the first organized sport that came up that her five-year-old could join. She showed her daughter videos of last year’s team so she’d know what to expect.

“She’s finally old enough to participate,” Kelli Hurtado said about her granddaughter.

Staying together as a group were Nowaniiki Resvaloso, 10, Akwaalimay Resvaloso, 11, Nephreteri Salinas, 15 and Nashashuk Resvaloso, 16, three of whom participated last year. They all welcomed the idea of having a positive activity that gets them out of the house and keeps them moving.

Established in 2002, the Inter Tribal Sports mission is to unify tribal youth and communities through structured athletic programs while providing necessary resources and developing a strong foundation in culture, leadership and wellness.

The Temecula-based organization features year-round youth sports and enrichment programs designed specifically for southern California Native American communities. ITS provides athletic opportunities and values education in conjunction with cultural, physical, mental, and spiritual development.

ITS furnishes youth and communities with occasions to build self-esteem, respect, acceptance and sportsmanship through fun and positive activities, while developing athletic skill and forming friendships, guided by appropriate role models in a sound, structured program that is non-profit, volunteer-oriented and open to all tribal youth.

More information on Inter Tribal Sports can be found at www.intertribalsports.org or by calling 951-719-3444.

Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians • Contributed

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A recently published study out of China found that children confined at home by the coronavirus lockdown had elevated rates of depression and anxiety, raising concerns about the risk for American kids as the pandemic sweeps the nation.

Nearly 23% of the 1,784 children who responded to a survey reported feeling depression, likely due to “the reduction of outdoor activities and social interactions,” researchers noted in JAMA Pediatrics. Almost 19% said they had anxiety symptoms. Both figures were higher than the baseline rates of 17.2% for depression and 9.3% for anxiety. The study surveyed children in grades two through six in and around Wuhan.

With psychiatric problems already on the rise for American children, mental health experts weighed in on what interventions and policies might prevent similar trends here.

“I think everyone in our field is worrying about increasing depression. The suicide rate, as it is, has been going up,” said Mary Alvord, a practicing psychologist in Maryland and author of multiple books on children’s mental health.

She has observed that the pandemic has been hardest for social kids who thrive on in-person interaction and children who are naturally pessimistic. The China study found that youth who were less optimistic were more likely to experience symptoms of depression.

She recommends that parents and those who work with kids acknowledge the reality of the pandemic to children but emphasize that it’s temporary, with comments like: “It’s a bad situation. Nobody would have chosen this. We don’t know what’s coming up next. We’re trying to stay as safe as possible with the precautions, and it’s not going to last forever.”

Robin Gurwitch, a psychologist and professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Duke University Medical Center, said building resiliency starts with parents.

“What the science tells us is that one of the biggest predictors of how well children will do after a large-scale event, a big danger like a pandemic, is how well the parents are doing,” she said. “It’s not that kids can’t see a parent or caregiver stressed or worried, because everyone is. The next step is equally important, that they can see their parent or caregiver cope and talk about, ‘This is what we’re going to do to pull it back together.’”

Beginning with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Gurwitch has been studying how children and young adults respond to crises. This one, she noted, is different.

“A pandemic like this is unique because it’s invisible,” she said. “It’s not like you can look outside and see where it is. People can be asymptomatic. This is more anxiety-provoking because we don’t know how long it’s going to last.”

To keep children mentally well during this unprecedented time, she recommends having them help other people (by writing hopeful messages with sidewalk chalk, for example), focus on what they can control (such as washing their hands), and reframe negative thoughts. Instead of “I haven’t seen my friends. They won’t remember who I am,” think: “I can’t see my friends. That’s hard, but how great will it be when I see them again? And here’s how I can stay connected.”

Ann Garland, a professor of counseling and marital and family therapy at the University of San Diego, said it’s important that public health officials, through the media, educate parents and caregivers on which responses are normal for kids to have these days and which might require professional attention.

“If there’s a pattern of emotional and social withdrawal, hopelessness, lack of interest in any of the activities that used to bring some pleasure, I would say a parent would want to reach out to a mental health professional,” Garland said. She noted that community mental health agencies and county health departments are good resources for people who are uninsured or have public insurance.

“It’s a slow-dripping kind of struggle that everybody is experiencing. With that said, I think one of the first and useful silver linings here is clearly an increased recognition of mental health needs and the impact of stress.” — Prof. Steven Berkowitz, University of Colorado

Even though most psychiatrists and therapists are currently offering services only remotely, Garland has been involved in research showing that so-called “telemental health” can be just as effective as in-person care. She noted that state and federal restrictions on telemedicine have been eased in the wake of COVID-19, a development she believes could expand access to mental health care even after the virus subsides.

Erica Fener Sitkoff, executive director of Voices for Georgia’s Children, said governments and communities can protect kids’ mental health amid the pandemic by supporting families.

That could include setting up mental health hotlines and “warmlines” (meant to avert crisis), and offering summer programs, even if they must be virtual, with a strong social-emotional component.

It also means helping families meet basic necessities, she said, such as providing food to those in need, increasing internet access, and arranging child care for essential workers. She noted that schools in Georgia have continued to supply free lunches to students and internet providers have furnished families with free broadband connections.

She said her nonprofit is working on a mental health awareness campaign to educate kids and families that it’s normal, and understandable, to feel a variety of emotions nowadays. The campaign, set to start in June, will target parents, teachers, child care providers and middle- to high-school students through social media, newsletters and online summer programs.

“Every child has experienced some level of stress, from missing friends to more extreme things like, ‘I’ve lost my home’ or ‘My family has to get food from the food bank,’” Fener Sitkoff said. “We’re operating at a new baseline of how kids are feeling and we need to adjust to that.

“Acknowledging that is the first step. That allows and opens things up for parents to seek support and for kids to seek support. We don’t need to pretend everything is OK and they should be OK and keep it moving, because they’re not.”

Families should also have regular mental health check-ins, where parents voice how they’ve been feeling as well, said Steven Berkowitz, a University of Colorado professor of psychiatry and director of the START (Stress, Trauma, Adversity Research, and Treatment) Center.

“Another useful approach, particularly in teens, is to ask them what their friends are saying,” he said. “A lot of teens don’t want to disclose their own thoughts and vulnerabilities. If you ask what their friends are saying, it gives you an opportunity to say, ‘What do you think about that? How are you doing with that?’”

Berkowitz said it’s inevitable the pandemic will cause increased psychiatric problems.

“It’s a slow-dripping kind of struggle that everybody is experiencing,” he remarked. “With that said, I think one of the first and useful silver linings here is clearly an increased recognition of mental health needs and the impact of stress.”

By Giles Bruce

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