With less than a month to go before the start of the upcoming school year, the school districts, cities and hospital systems in Denton County are gathering to discuss the mental health of the county’s young people.
“There are going to be some lasting effects of maybe a struggle due to the pandemic,” said Monya Crow, Executive Director of Counseling and Social Work Services in the Lewisville ISD.
The Lewisville ISD is hosting a two-day mental health summit this week to better coordinate mental health services and support for students in Denton County schools.
Multiple studies and surveys have shown that young people have struggled with mental health concerns during the ongoing pandemic, including rising rates of depression, anxiety, and suicide attempts.
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“I think for many of us it has kind of brought to the surface the things we struggle with the most, so certainly our kids have experienced isolation and for some of them that means being in environments that were not necessarily healthy or contributing in a healthy way to them,” Crow said. “And so what we see is that the lack of social skills, the lack of social-emotional skills, that were there, in the beginning, have been exacerbated by the isolation and the lack of access to some of the support systems that they’ve been used to in school.”
