A study finds that many teenagers who have autism use the mental health services at their school. This finding shows that schools really need to put effort into making sure that there is a mental health practitioner in the building. It also shows that there needs to be a system of follow up care that can be accessed after graduation.
Schools provide many important services to students who have special needs. There should be teachers who have been specifically trained in Special Education. There should be a reasonable amount of teacher’s aids, who are there to work with students (and not just to make copies of worksheets). Your child might meet with a speech therapist or a physical therapist. The students in your child’s special education classes might receive some form of group therapy.
Public schools that are having budget issues tend to cut back on the things that they are not specifically required by law to provide. Often, this means either dramatically reducing the number of hours that a qualified mental health practitioner is present in a school building, or, to cut that position all together. Doing so only harms the students who need, and rely, on that service.
A study that has been published in the August issue of “Psychiatric Services” shows that many teenagers who have autism make use of their school’s mental health services. The study was done by researchers at Washington University in St. Louis.
The study looked at over 920 adolescents who had been diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and who had been enrolled in special education. The teens were between the ages of 13 and 17 when this study began, in 2000. The study lasted for ten years.
The findings shows that more than 46% of the teens who had autism used a mental health service in the past year. They saw a counselor or psychologist for help with behavioral issues, anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions.
Out of the group that used a mental health service, 49% of the teenagers were using the mental health service that they could access through their school. Researchers noted that teenagers who were black, or teenagers who were from lower income families, were more likely to use the mental health services at their school, rather than to seek help from psychologists outside the school.
Personally, I think that there is an obvious reason why teenagers who had autism, and who came from low income families, were likely to use the mental health system at their schools. This was probably the only form of mental health care that they were able to get to on their own, and that their families could afford to get for them.
The study shows that it is very important that these teens have a means to continue to access mental health services after they graduate from high school. Right now, the teens who rely on the mental health system at their school will be left without any support after graduation. The study noted that continued support is especially important for African-American and low income students, (since this group is heavily relying on their school as their source of mental health care).
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