Mental Health Support in New Orleans

A recent Gambit article reported that most schools in New Orleans don’t have the number of mental health professionals they need, resulting in our peers slipping through the cracks. It’s no secret that anxiety, burnout, and depression have increased and we’re feeling those impacts, with Black and brown kids in the city bearing the brunt.

While the subject of mental health support has become less stigmatized, young people like us still need more support. As heartbreaking events — whether it’s the rolling back of essential rights or increased gun violence — continue, the need to prioritize mental health education and make sure our systems are set up to support our varying mental health needs long-term is more crucial than ever.

Young New Orleanians need consistent access to mental health care support. According to the article, “A projected 51,000 of Louisiana’s 694,000 K-12 students have clinical depression, according to a February report by Hopeful Futures, a campaign by a team of nonprofits including National Alliance on Mental Illness and UNICEF. And of that number, only an estimated 19,000 receive treatment.”

While schools might have social workers, the wait time can take months, and we might not get the help we need when we need it. We also need free after school group therapy sessions where people of all different backgrounds can get more specific with their issues and needs.

We need specialized support for kids who have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences. The socioeconomic status of parents and household family dynamics can impact the mental health of young people and how they function in school, and school administrators need the tools to understand how behavioral responses in school can be caused by household problems.

Young people in our city also need more education around mental health. We can’t begin to explain how helpful learning about self regulation techniques would have been over these past few pandemic years.

Some of these recommendations and paths forward are already mapped out as implementation steps as part of the city’s first-ever Youth Master Plan, developed by young people like us. As part of the plan, we’ve identified the need to conduct assessment with school communities on school culture and climate in order to inform expansion of mental health teams in schools.

We’ve also identified the need to provide training for all adults engaged in youth-serving programs on how to best support young people who may experience emotional/ behavioral/ and mental health challenges.

Evidence of our city’s mental health crisis is all around us. Young people in the city just need elected officials and education leaders to take action.

– Felicia Hart
– Hannah Jacobs

This article originally published in the August 1, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.