The recent deaths of Michael Brown of Ferguson, MO, Eric Garner of New York City, and 12-year-old Tamir Rice of Cleveland have brought to the national consciousness painful questions about race and police response. Clearly, much hard work needs to be done to examine these questions further and find solutions. Although there is no indication that any of these victims had mental health or developmental issues, their deaths beg a subsequent question: “what happens when persons with disabilities or those with mental health issues interact with law enforcement?” It’s an important question because up to 15% of all 911 calls in our country involve suspects who either have a mental illness or another disability. And the sad answer to the question is that these suspects fare very, very badly. Approximately half of those shot by police in the line of duty are estimated to have had mental health problems or other disabilities.
Accommodating Migraines in a Student’s Education
It seems that there is an increasing trend that more students are having trouble going to school and staying in class as a result of have migraine headaches. One of the unfortunate consequences for children and teenagers who suffer from chronic headaches, or more specifically migraines, is that they miss a lot of school days. When this happens, the family and school need to work together, with help and support from the student’s medical team, to find a balance where the student can attend school as often as possible, plan for when he or she is unable to attend, and ultimately help the student make progress in his or her academic program.
Unfortunately, this fine balancing act can become very contentious. Although some school districts seem to recognize the medical validity of school absences due to migraines, in worst cases other school districts call truancy officers. There does seem to be an increas in district becoming more leary of medical notes for conditions that are not readily observable. Even in those cases where school districts recognize that accommodations need to be made, where and how these students will be educated can become the subject of dispute. A recent court case validates the efforts of a Pennsylvania school district to educate a high school student with refractory migraine headaches who had a 504 Plan by enrolling him in a “cyber school.” The family argued that their son should have been on an IEP where he could have received additional supports and services to help him attend school. Additionally, the family claimed that enrollment in a cyber school denied their son FAPE, or a free appropriate public education, because the cyber school was not the least restrictive environment. The family’s claims, however, were ultimately rejected by the court, which found that given the student’s inability to attend school and the school district's well-documented and numerous attempts to accommodate the student, the “cyber school” was his least restrictive environment and an appropriate placement.
A Complete Breakdown in Support Systems in Sandy Hook Tragedy
The Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate has just released the results of its exhaustive study of the December 2012 horrific shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which left 20 children and six educators murdered along with the shooter and his mother. While the report recognizes the “ubiquitous” presence of guns as a causal factor, it carefully states that it is not assigning blame on any one individual or institution in its review. Additionally, the report stresses that individuals with autism or such mental health issues as OCD and crippling anxiety, all diagnoses which Adam Lanza possessed, do not inherently become mass murderers. When these conditions go untreated, however, they can still be destructive to the individual, the family, and the community. The report is a sad, lengthy treatise depicting numerous lost opportunities and failures to communicate and coordinate care among the school system, parents, pediatrician, community psychiatrist, emergency room, and ultimately the Yale Child Study Center, which raised an urgent alarm about Adam Lanza’s deteriorating mental health—an alarm that went unanswered and unconsidered in Adam’s subsequent IEPs. The school district was overly focused on meeting Adam’s perceived curricular needs and not his urgent mental health needs. Though the Child Advocate report clearly states that “no direct line of causation can be drawn” from the lapses and the ultimate mass murder, lessons clearly must be learned from this tragedy.
Role of School Staff in the Recovery of Students with Concussions
We are hearing a lot about concussions in the news these days. To the recent disbelief of sports commentators and fans, a University of Michigan football coach left a 20-year-old quarterback in a game after a blow to the head despite his stumbling in the field immediately after impact. Meanwhile, NFL players have regularly been making the news for, to put it delicately, behaving badly. There is speculation that some of the domestic violence in which these players have engaged may be the result of head trauma, a hypothesis deemed plausible by a University of Pennsylvania professor known as a “neurocriminologist.” The fact remains, however, that concussions are traumatic brain injuries. Although most patients with concussions are expected to recover fully, young children and teens, because of their developing brains, along with the elderly, are most vulnerable to the effects of concussion. Thus, these children will need careful monitoring as they return to school and other activities.
Lessons on Internet Safety In the Wake of Sandy Hook by Marilyn Green Rebnord
The internet is a wondrous strange place for the parents of a child with special needs. With the click of a mouse, parents can research information, locate specialists, learn about medical treatment and educational options, and perhaps most importantly of all, end their isolation. All at once, parents can locate a community of other parents struggling with the same issues with which they are grappling. Whether a child’s needs are severe or mild, parents may find much more effective and sanity-saving support from virtual strangers than they can from well-meaning pediatricians, grandparents, or friends.
Keeping the Mental Illness Conversation Going After Sandy Hook
Even 6 months after the tragedy at Shady Hook Elementary
School, we’ve all been asking what may have caused the horrific shooting. We may or may not agree that the ready
availability of assault weapons and the playing of violent video games may have
contributed to the rampage, but we can surely agree that failures in the mental
health system also played a significant role. We don’t know if his mother struggled to
obtain mental health services for her son, although we know that she had home-schooled
him for a time. What we do know,
however, is that for many families, providing mental health services for their
desperately ill children is an extraordinary challenge. And many, many children, as well as adults,
are falling through the cracks. I see the struggle for mental health services occur on a daily basis.
According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), 4 million children and adolescents in this country suffer from a serious mental disorder that causes
significant functional impairments at home, at school, or with peers. Additionally, 21% of children between ages 9
and 17 have been diagnosed with a mental or addictive disorder that causes at
least minimal impairment. Despite this
high prevalence rate, NAMI reports that in any given year, only 20% of children
with a mental disorder are identified and treated. That’s a lot of kids to not
receive treatment, and the consequences can be tragic. Suicide is now the third leading cause of
death among youth aged 15 to 24. Of
those children who commit suicide, over 90% have been diagnosed with a mental
disorder. Additionally, 50% of teens
with a mental disorder will drop out of school.
Many of these youth will wind up in the criminal justice system. The National Institute of Mental Health found
that 65% of boys and 75% of girls in juvenile detention have at least one
mental disorder.
Senate Hearing on the School to Prison Pipleline
In December the U.S. Senate held hearings on ending the
“School to Prison Pipeline.” As
discussed previously in this blog and elsewhere, the “school to prison
pipeline” refers to exclusionary disciplinary practices (e.g., suspension, expulsions,
or even arrests) resulting from blind adherence to zero tolerance policies,
which critics harshly state criminalize otherwise normal behavior and are
disproportionately used on minority and special needs students. African American males are 3 ½ times more likely
to be suspended or expelled than are their white peers, and students with
special needs are twice as likely to be suspended or expelled than are their
non-disabled peers. The Senate hearings,
which were held before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution,
Civil Rights and Human Rights and chaired by Senator Dick Durbin, were the
first ever held to address the overall question of school discipline and how it
has gone so terribly wrong. But perhaps
more importantly, the hearings discussed what needs to happen to “plug” the
pipeline.
So how many students are being suspended or expelled? According to data collected by the Civil
Rights Project and released last March, 3 million students were suspended from
our nation’s schools in 2009-2010. As
graphically illustrated in the report, “Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary
Exclusion from School” and discussed in a previous blog, this is enough
students to fill every seat at every major league ball park and NFL stadium in
the country. And for many of these
students, suspensions or expulsions may be their entry into the school to
prison pipeline. According to a Texas
study, students who are expelled or suspended are three times more likely to
become involved with the juvenile justice system within the year.
Autism Society Reponse to Newtown Tragedy
I am still reeling from the depth and magnitude of what happened last week with the killing of so many young children and their heroic teachers and staff. I am not sure when, if ever, I will be able to make any sense of this extreme violence. However, in the media frenzy that always follows such events there have been irresponsible statements attributing autism as a possible explanation. Below is the Autism Society's reponse on this issue.
The Harsh Reality of Incarcerated Youth
The use of seclusion and restraint for children with special
needs in our nation’s schools has received national attention. These practices have been deemed as cruel and
dangerous, and various pieces of legislation have been proposed to eliminate
their use. Yet, these practices are
being used on an ongoing basis on our nation’s incarcerated youth. Up to 81,000 teens are incarcerated in
juvenile facilities on any given night, and an additional 10,000 teens are in
adult prisons. According to the ACLU, which released a report on
solitary confinement in October, a significant number of these facilities
isolate youth for days, weeks, months, or even years. The use of solitary confinement, according to
the ACLU, causes “anguish, provokes serious mental and physical health
problems, and works against rehabilitation for teenagers.”
One of the most tragic outcomes for incarcerated youth is
suicide, and half of teen suicides occur while youth are placed in solitary
isolation. A position paper published
by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, which expresses
concern about the high rate and potential underreporting of teen suicides in
jails, states that further research is needed to delineate better the
relationship between suicide and isolation.
Yet, according to the American Academy of Child & Adolescent
Psychiatry (5), the research is in already.
The potential psychiatric consequences of prolonged use of solitary
confinement on these “developmentally vulnerable” adolescents are “well
recognized” and include depression, anxiety, and psychosis.
The Real Harm of Bullying
October was National Bullying Prevention month. Throughout our nation’s schools, students attended pep rallies, signed petitions, wore t-shirts with anti-bully messages, and participated in anti-bully marches. Anti-bullying Facebook pages, some with extraordinary amounts of helpful resources and information, were created. It was all a wonderful display of anti-bully sentiment which ensured that everyone was thinking about bullying behavior and its consequence, at least for awhile. So what happens in November? Now that anti-bullying month has ended, what is occurring today in your child’s lunchroom or on the playground? Were the October messages enough to reduce bullying? What really works to help reduce bullying?
There is a huge amount of literature on the best methods and curriculums to defeat bullying. Yet some of it is contradictory. One strategy from one anti-bullying expert is deemed misguided by another. To add clarity to this discussion, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has defined 10 best practices for bullying prevention. Those 10 strategies are:
1. Focus on the social environment of the school
2. Assess bullying at your school
3. Garner staff and parent support for bullying prevention
4. Form a group to coordinate the school’s bullying prevention activities
5. Train your staff in bullying prevention
6. Establish and enforce school rules and policies related to bullying
7. Increase adult supervision in hot spots where bullying occurs
8. Intervene consistently and appropriately in bullying situations
9. Focus some class time on bullying prevention.
10. Continue these efforts over time.
- « Previous Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- …
- 11
- Next Page »
