Helping Connecticut Schools Navigate the Changing Tides in Youth Mental Health

This post is part of our special blog series taking a closer look at the impact of Connecticut’s behavioral health workforce challenges on children and families – and exploring solutions. Find the rest of the series here. 

By Jeana Bracey, PhD, CHDI Associate Vice President for School and Community Initiatives

Most educators today recognize that student mental health and well-being have a profound influence on academic achievement, behavior, and the overall school climate. In the ongoing rebuilding period following the onset of the pandemic in 2020, as increased youth needs and safety concerns coincide with a nationwide shortage of children’s behavioral health providers, the role of schools in supporting student well-being is more critical than ever.

While research shows that most youth experiencing behavioral health challenges do not receive treatment, about 70% of those who do get help access it at school. This makes sense: providing support in the places where kids already spend most of their waking hours can reduce or eliminate common barriers like transportation challenges, difficulty finding providers, affordability, and stigma.  

But facing higher student needs, inconsistent funding, a shifting political climate, and staffing challenges of their own, many schools and districts now find themselves at the center of a “perfect storm” when it comes to student mental health. And with special pandemic-era federal funding for school mental health services set to expire soon - and future federal funding uncertain  -  there is an urgent need for states to craft more sustainable plans to help schools balance students’ educational and mental health needs. 

The silver lining? Here in Connecticut, schools and districts don’t have to navigate these challenges alone. In this post, I’ll unpack some of the current challenges impacting schools, highlight ways the state can bolster school mental health efforts, and share resources available now to help schools chart a course to calmer waters.

The Rising Tide of Student Mental Health Needs

Before mapping out any journey, you need to identify a starting point. While Connecticut school data collection and reporting has improved in recent years through tools like EdSight, there are still gaps in what we know at a statewide level.

That’s why our team at CHDI is currently working on a Comprehensive School Mental Health Landscape Analysis for the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) and Department of Education (CSDE). Our findings - along with policy, system, and practice recommendations - will be published in a report early this year. (Be sure to sign up for CHDI's email list to be among the first to know when the report is available!)

But while we may not have the full picture yet, what we do know is concerning. According to state youth survey data, rates of Connecticut youth reporting prolonged feelings of sadness or hopelessness have increased over the years (from 25% in 2005 to 35% in 2023), particularly since the pandemic. While this increase occurred across socioeconomic and demographic groups, rates are higher among girls, Hispanic/Latino youth, and LGBTQ+ youth. 

Teachers are seeing this trend, but don’t always know how to help. In a 2024 survey by the Connecticut Education Association (CEA), 88% of teachers surveyed statewide agreed that student mental health is a “somewhat or very serious problem,” but 78% said they don’t feel “equipped to deal with their students’ mental health challenges.” 

While everyone in a school can play a role in supporting student well-being and promoting a positive school climate, teachers aren’t mental health professionals – nor should we expect them to be. That’s the role of school social workers, school health clinicians, psychologists, and counselors. But increasingly, these school mental health staff are also under strain.

The Impact of Staffing Shortages on Schools

As outlined in last year's Strategic Plan to Strengthen Connecticut’s Behavioral Health Workforce for Children, Youth, and Families, Connecticut has been significantly impacted by a shortage of community-based behavioral health clinicians. This shortage is also being felt in the school mental health workforce.

On average, school mental health staff-to-student ratios are high across Connecticut, as illustrated in Figure 1:

Since 2022, the state has improved the statewide average Student-to-School Psychologist ratio - from 548:1 to 485:1 – but does not yet meet recommended benchmarks for School Social Workers or School Counselors. There is also significant variation in these ratios across individual schools and districts.

Nationally, in a 2024 survey by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), just 48% of public schools reported being able to effectively provide mental health services to all students who need them, a decrease of almost ten percentage points from 2021-22. Respondents cited “insufficient mental health professional staff coverage to manage caseload,” inadequate funding, and “inadequate access to licensed mental health professionals” as the most common barriers.

Teacher and staff shortages in certain high-need Connecticut districts (and some subjects and specialties) are adding to the pressure. In the CEA survey:

• 85% of teachers agreed that teacher and staff shortages were “somewhat or very serious” problems
• 78% identified educator stress and burnout as a “very serious problem”
• 56% of teachers felt there was insufficient support for student mental health needs at their schools
• 86% said they supported hiring more counselors and school psychologists

Many of CHDI's school partners have also shared that, out of necessity, some teachers who were previously able to take on specialized roles championing school climate and social-emotional learning initiatives have been called back to the classroom full-time.

Schools are also feeling the ripple effects of the ongoing workforce shortage among community-based behavioral health providers, which my colleagues have discussed in earlier posts in this series.

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Melissa Jacob, LCSW, Senior Director of Children's Services at Bridges Healthcare in Milford (a CHDI partner), says that when her agency began partnering with local schools to provide student mental health services, they expected to see a decrease in youth seeking care at their outpatient clinic.

“But that hasn’t changed,” Jacob says, “because the vast majority of kids we’re seeing in schools weren’t going to come to outpatient services due to a variety of issues,” including transportation challenges and conflicts with parents’ work schedules or other childcare needs. It turned out that Bridges had uncovered a new group of students needing support, even as demand at its outpatient clinic remained higher than ever.

These stories and statistics provide some context for what we’ve heard from many of the schools we work with: that they’re stuck in constant crisis mode, with little time to step back and intentionally assess, plan, and create clear structures, roles, and processes for supporting student mental health.

An Unreliable Funding Forecast

Many school districts in Connecticut have been able to utilize federal funds from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to bridge local funding gaps and bolster student mental health services and staffing. While this temporary infusion was a welcome response to the post-COVID increase in youth mental health needs – which many hoped would subside as the world returned to “normal” - any remaining funds must be spent down by 2026, even as student needs remain elevated. Districts around the state are now working to figure out how to sustain their current level of mental health services after reaching this funding cliff - and recent funding announcements under the new federal administration are only contributing to this uncertainty.

Connecticut’s expanded Medicaid plan does cover some school mental health services, but currently only for Medicaid-eligible children for which the services are required as part of an IEP/504 special education plan. New legislation to be implemented over the next two years will expand billing for all Medicaid-eligible students and shows promise for expanding access to care. 

It’s also important to note that Connecticut is an economically and racially segregated state, composed of 169 different cities and towns and over 200 public school districts. With K-12 education funded primarily through local property taxes, there is significant variation – and disparity - in student needs, staffing ratios, and school resources from district to district. Urban public school districts, which serve the majority of the state’s students of color and families with lower incomes, will likely be the hardest hit when ARPA funds expire.

Charting the Course Ahead

I see it every day in my work at CHDI: Connecticut schools and districts are absolutely dedicated to supporting their students’ mental health and well-being. They just need a little help.

State-Level Supports: Funding and Infrastructure

Just as lighthouses guide ships safely through the fog, the state can play a critical role in helping schools navigate these rough waters by ensuring they have the necessary funding and infrastructure to effectively support students. Key priorities for the state should include:

• Providing reliable, longer-term funding to enable schools to invest sustainably in high-quality, comprehensive school mental health services and systems
• Increasing state-level school mental health data collection, infrastructure, and accountability to better monitor the needs of schools and students in real time and support investments in effective interventions (must go hand-in-hand with sustainable funding)
• Supporting training and workforce development for school staff in behavioral health competencies to better understand and respond to challenges
• Expanding and increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates and grant funding for school-based health centers and community-based behavioral health providers so that schools can depend on the larger system of care

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CHDI works closely with the State Department of Education and Department of Children and Families to supply the research, best practices, training and implementation support, and data collection to guide state policy and help schools and districts statewide promote safety, positive outcomes, and equitable supports for all students.

My team will expand on these recommendations in more detail in our forthcoming Comprehensive School Mental Health Landscape Analysis, which will provide additional data and feedback from schools, families, and providers to better inform systemic policy and funding implications for the state. 

What Local Educational Leaders Can Do

In the meantime, what can schools and districts do to chart the course ahead?

When you’re working under stress with limited resources, it can be hard to take a step back and assess what’s working well, what could be working better, and be strategic about how you allocate those limited resources – but it’s also the most important time to do just that. Schools and communities must look at ways to wisely allocate existing resources and engage in opportunities to leverage successful programs that invest in school mental health.

When schools begin moving from a crisis-driven approach to a more intentional, structured approach to student mental health, they can identify kids who need help earlier, so that fewer will progress to crisis levels. And when crises do arise, schools with Comprehensive School Mental Health plans will know exactly what to do.

A program in Connecticut is now offering schools and districts support for exactly this kind of work. CHDI and our partners in the Connecting to Care IV Students (CONNECT IV) initiative are providing technical assistance, training, financial incentives, and consultation to schools and districts statewide to engage interdisciplinary teams of staff and faculty, conduct needs assessments, identify key priorities, develop realistic custom action plans, and help them implement those plans to improve outcomes for students and their families.

The best part? There is no cost to participating schools and districts!

Because schools and districts have varying needs and capacity, CONNECT IV offers multiple ways to get involved. Learn more about CONNECT IV here, and reach out to our team with any questions.

CHDI also coordinates several other school mental health initiatives that are FREE for Connecticut schools and districts:

• Trauma ScreenTIME Schools Course – An online course for school staff and leaders (no clinical training required) on the effects of trauma, best practices for conducting trauma screening, and developing a screening process that fits your school’s needs.
• School-Based Diversion Initiative (SBDI) – Designed to prevent in-school arrests and reduce exclusionary discipline for youth with behavioral health challenges, SBDI is a school-level initiative that engages teachers, staff, administrators, and school resource officers through consultation, expert training, capacity-building, and connecting to community resources.
• CBITS/Bounce Back – CHDI trains and supports school-based clinicians to implement these evidence-based group interventions for students who have experienced trauma.
• Students Supporting Students – A new, evidence-based student peer support model currently being piloted in Connecticut that trains middle and high school students how to support peers experiencing mental health challenges.

Helping Schools and Students Weather the Storm

Building school environments that are supportive of everybody’s well-being – ones that are trauma-informed, equitable, take a proactive, strategic, restorative approach, support staff wellness, and see student mental health as everyone’s shared responsibility – ultimately benefits us all.

At CHDI, we will continue working with our partners to strengthen this system so that all Connecticut youth can weather the current storm (and any others forming on the horizon) - and build the skills and strengths they'll need to thrive throughout their lives.

Special thanks to Communications Manager Shannon Houston for her assistance in pulling together this post.