Youths are struggling with anxiety, depression more than ever. UW team trying to get more psychologists in the pipeline.

Every year, 60 to 70 school psychologist positions in Wisconsin go unfilled.

That's based on the most recent data collected by the Wisconsin School Psychologists Association. And it's a good reminder why Katie Eklund, co-director of the School Mental Health Collaborative at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spends her time focusing on workforce initiatives.

Back in the early aughts when she was getting into the profession, she was up against a competitive pool of candidates.

But the pool has drained in recent years.

"When I entered the field, it was more difficult to get a job. A lot of positions were filled, and it was similarly competitive to teaching," said Eklund, who is also an associate professor in the Department of Educational Psychology. "Now we're in a much different space."

Eklund and her team at the Department of Educational Psychology have been studying the reasons behind the shrinking pipeline. And some of that, they've learned, has to do with the availability of graduate and training programs throughout the country. At the same time, higher education is expensive, sometimes to a prohibitive degree.

The timing couldn't be worse in terms of need. Children and youth struggle at record numbers with anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Further, nearly 20% of school psychologists plan on leaving the field in the next five years due to administrative pressures and another 20% plan to retire in the next five years, according to research from the National Association of School Psychologists.

To address this problem, the School of Educational Psychology has recently been awarded a four-year, $10.4 million federal contract from the U.S. Department of Education. Its years-long task is to expand and improve the country's workforce of school psychologists, school social workers and school counselors.

The grant establishes a program called Mental Health Evaluation, Training, Research, and Innovation Center for Schools, referred to by its acronym METRICS. It was written in collaboration with other researchers and trainers from the University of South Florida, the University of Iowa, and the University of California Santa Barbara.

The goal, according to Stephen Kilgus, a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology, is to bring a larger and more diverse group of mental health practitioners to the field.

Improving the pipeline means readying a new generation of school psychologists

Students who pursue graduate degrees in school psychology spend more time and money than the one- to two-year programs that school counselors and social workers pursue, Eklund said. It's part of the reason for the shortage: spending years in school and accruing debt in the process isn't a very attractive prospect.

Since April, the School Mental Health Collaborative has been working with the Madison Metropolitan School District to create a pipeline of culturally responsive mental health professionals through a separate $6 million federal grant from the Department of Education.

Over the next five years, the School of Educational Psychology will train 24 new school psychology graduate students. The cohort of students will complete their practicum and internship at Madison schools and, from there, spend three years working at high-needs public schools across the state.

METRICS will work on assembling the next generation of diverse school mental health professionals using a similar strategy for about 300 universities and school districts across the country, Kilgus, executive director of METRICS, said.

The program will do this by working with 300 training programs across the country, which will provide tuition and cost of living support for graduate students' school mental health degrees, and establishing partnerships with school districts where need is high.

Other materials available to schools will be disseminated through UW-Madison's School of Education. Those materials include resources, webinars, professional learning and development modules, evidence-based training models, and insights and data from experts.

The school psychologist shortage impacts rural and low-income areas

Wisconsin's challenges filling school psychology positions on a yearly basis aren't unique, but they're made starker by the fact that the state has eight training programs for school mental health professionals. That's a lot more than other states have, Eklund said, and the need for services in those states is still great.

"We're really fortunate and even still, we have those 60, 70 openings each year," Eklund said.

The delicate balance, Kilgus said, will be to work with candidates where they are, through online and hybrid training programs. That will be especially crucial when working with grantees who live in rural and/or low-income areas.

"Every year we hear from folks who would love to become a certified school psychologist, but the closest university training program is still hours away," Kilgus said.

It doesn't make sense, Kilgus said, to pull potential candidates away from areas where shortages exist locally, especially because many towns and small cities of Wisconsin have a "brain drain" problem. Talent often disperses to more resource-rich parts of the country, where school psychology programs abound.

Solving the 20-20 phenomena

Addressing the gap in school psychologists is needed now more than ever, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, as grade school and high school students experiencing mental health conditions continue to outpace available school-based mental health services.

Even before the pandemic, nearly 20% of children and adolescents under 18 had at least one mental health disorder, and only half of them received needed treatment from a mental health professional, according to JAMA Pediatrics.

That service gap has only grown in the fallout of COVID-19. Educational psychologist experts at the School Mental Health Collaborative refer to this as the 20-20 phenomena, where those 20% of youth have mental health concerns but only 20% of youth receive treatment for their concerns, Eklund said.

"Certainly with the pandemic, we saw a lot of those concerns exacerbated as kids' social support networks were taken away," said Eklund. "Having access to their friends and their peer support is especially important during these developmental time periods."

The pandemic also pushed more people, especially young people, to speak openly about their mental health and seek out curriculum with an emphasis on social emotional learning. As kids evolved their understanding and could better identify mental health concerns, schools across the country scrambled to grow their services.

"Those issues across sectors and organizations have created a constellation of challenges for meeting the mental, emotional and behavioral health needs of children right now across schools, and communities," said Andy Garbacz, co-director of the School Mental Health Collaborative.

Natalie Eilbert covers mental health issues for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. You can reach her at neilbert@gannett.com or view her Twitter profile at @natalie_eilbert. If you or someone you know is dealing with suicidal thoughts, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 or text "Hopeline" to the National Crisis Text Line at 741-741.

This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: University of Wisconsin-Madison to improve school psychology shortage