Woods: No place for mental health care in schools? Talk about endangering children.

After 17 people died in the 2018 shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, there was a rare bit of unity around one issue: mental health.

While the divide over guns only seemed to widen — with some pushing for more guns and others pushing for more gun control — people from quite disparate groups came together to support more mental health care.

And for a change, this wasn’t just talk. There was action. Legislation included funding for mental health in public schools. Florida still ranked near the bottom of the nation in mental health spending, but it was something.

That was five years ago. Since then, the need for mental health care in Florida and America hasn’t diminished. If anything, during this tumultuous period — with the pandemic, politics, social unrest, culture wars and more — it has only increased. And that’s particularly true for children.

So it was disheartening, to say the least, to see what happened recently, as families prepare to send their children back to school.

Moms for Liberty proclaimed that mental health care has “NO place in public schools.”

It was one thing for Moms for Liberty, the organization formed in Florida to fight mask mandates in schools, to spread across the country and take on books or history in schools. But of all the things to attack in the name of “protecting children,” this one stands out.

The reason for this stance? Some in the organization say mental health care is just another version of one of those nasty three-letter acronyms they’re busy trying to wipe out. This time it isn’t CRT or DEI. It’s SEL, social-emotional learning.

SEL involves teaching students social and emotional tools that help them manage their emotions, collaborate, make good choices. Some have called these “soft skills.” (And heaven forbid that boys, in particular, learn anything that can be described as soft.) Some have labeled it “woke indoctrination.”

Some even have accused Gov. Ron DeSantis and his wife, Casey, of aiding in the indoctrination — by supporting mental health initiatives.

But this recent Moms for Liberty statement came in response to President Joe Biden announcing plans to improve mental health care by adding more providers and expanding access.

Biden said: “Mental health care is health care.”

Moms for Liberty replied on social media: “Mental health care is health care Mr. President. That’s why it has NO place in public schools.”

This was punctuated with a hashtag.

#ParentalRights.

Shouldn't wait for tragedy

This summer, during Gun Violence Prevention Month, a group headed to Washington D.C. These men and women, most of them parents, are in a club none of them wish for anyone else to join — the Principal Recovery Network, a national network of current and former school leaders who have experienced gun violence tragedies in their buildings.

It’s a sad statement that there’s a need for such an organization, made even sadder by the fact that it has kept adding members ever since it was created a year after Parkland.

Santa Fe, Santa Clarita, Nashville, Oxford, Uvalde and more.

When the school leaders met with lawmakers, they didn’t focus on the gun debates. They emphasized the need for more mental health care in schools, both for recovery and for prevention.

Ty Thompson, the principal at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day 2018, described how after the shootings, his school created a wellness center, bringing in two portables and staffing them with mental health experts.

He said schools shouldn’t wait for a tragedy to have a wellness center.

“Every school should have a wellness center on their campus,” he told The 74, a nonproft news website with a name sparked by America’s 74 million children. “That’s just the state that we’re in and we need to keep tabs on what’s happening with our youth to make sure that if there are problems, we can catch them early.”

This isn’t some liberal idea. If anything, mental health has become a conservative mantra.

After each mass shooting, some have echoed what Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said after the Uvalde shootings left 21 dead. It wasn’t the guns. It was the shooter.

"We as a state, we as a society need to do a better job with mental health,” he said. “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and to do something about it."

Mental health is an everyday issue

This is about much more than school shootings. That’s what makes news all too often. But mental health is an everyday issue, in every school.

Earlier this year, Duval County released the results of the last Youth Risk Behavior Survey, taken in 2021.

Among the findings: It said almost 34 percent of Duval County middle school students and 26 percent of high school students surveyed “seriously considered” suicide.

There were other gut-wrenching statistics, tied to all kinds of stressors, some as old as time (peer pressure, puberty, poverty), some a part of these times (from COVID to cyberbullying).

You would, of course, hope that children can get support the support they need at home. But that isn’t always the case. Sometimes what’s happening at home is part of the issue.

So where should they turn?

If it’s up to Moms for Liberty, they shouldn’t be able to turn to the pages of a growing list of books that the organization says are endangering children. And they certainly shouldn’t be able to access mental health care at school. That has NO place there, right?

It brings to mind what author Jodi Picoult said about a parent trying to ban some of her books in Florida: “There is absolutely nothing wrong with a parent deciding a certain book is not right for her child. There is a colossal problem with a parent deciding that, therefore, no child should be allowed to read that book.”

A similar statement could be made about mental health and #ParentalRights.

It’s one thing for a mom to say she doesn’t want her child to have access to mental health care at school. It’s another for Moms for Liberty to say that no child should have access to mental health care at school. Talk about endangering children.

mwoods@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4212

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Moms for Liberty says mental health care has no place in schools