A new initiative from the University of Vermont hopes to address the shortage of mental health professionals available to support the state’s youth.

Known as the Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools, the program plans to train and place 52 school counselors, social workers and mental health clinicians in rural schools throughout Vermont for the next five years.

 from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have found rising levels of depression and anxiety among Vermont middle and high school students. 

Despite this, Vermont lacks an adequate number of . In 2023, the state’s Workforce Development Board estimated a need for 230 more providers to meet growing demand. 

The new Catamount Counseling Collaborative for Rural Schools aims to address the gap. 

Through the program — funded by a $3.8 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education — University of Vermont graduate students are expected to contribute at least 25,000 clinical hours annually to support rural communities.

“Vermont mental health needs are pervasive and complex and they’re currently underserved and this is a way to reach them,” said Anna Elliott, associate professor of counseling.

Elliott, the principal investigator for the grant, has experience running a similar initiative in Montana, where she spent five years developing a program to support rural communities with mental health professionals. 

A key part of the program, Elliot said, is to encourage graduates to continue working in rural schools or mental health facilities after completing their training. She said she tailored the program to Vermont’s unique needs. This included analyzing various statistics from community needs assessments on issues such as suicide rates, substance use disorder and the stigma associated with seeking mental health services, ensuring the program aligns closely with the landscape of Vermont’s mental health needs.

“One of our primary goals in setting up the training program was attending to students’ reports that they often didn’t feel prepared to go and work in a rural environment,” she said. “Having an intensive and intentional training program that sets them up to really understand what they’re walking into and how to be prepared and how to ask for support incentivized students to stay, so we’re hoping to replicate that here.”

The program offers a stipend to those who remain in their assigned schools for at least one year, helping to ease potential barriers like securing a full-time job or finding affordable housing.

In Montana, Elliott said she noticed some graduate students couldn’t stay in rural schools due to limited funding for permanent positions. Other challenges, including housing and job security, also made it difficult for them to remain in these high-need areas.

“I’m taking the model that I did in Montana and integrating that in with the community schools model to not just say, ‘here’s a couple graduate students that will be here for a year’ but let’s actually take a systemic look at what’s happening in the school — what are the needs, resources, barriers and strength,” Elliott said.

To address these challenges, the program focuses on recruiting graduate students who already come from rural areas. By offering low-residency options, the program allows these students to complete much of their coursework remotely. This means they can stay at home rather than moving to campus, making it easier for them to balance their studies with their existing commitments.

“This grant provides significant opportunity to bring students into the helping professions who might not otherwise have access to this kind of specialized training,” said Danielle Jatlow, a co-principal investigator and social worker who coordinates UVM’s bachelor’s of social work program, in a press release from the university.

UVM faculty, including program co-leaders Robin Hausheer and Lance Smith, both associate professors of counseling, are starting outreach to rural schools. They hope to place graduate students in schools as early as this semester, according to the release.

“There are people and kids that are getting served this year that might not have been otherwise,” Elliott said in the release. “So that feels like everything.” 

This was originally published on .

COLUMBIA — The number of mental health counselors in South Carolina schools doubled in a year and a half, released Thursday by the state’s Medicaid agency.

A found a dearth of mental health counselors in the state’s schools, despite an increasing need for mental health services for children. On average, the state had only one counselor for every 1,300 students, and nine school districts didn’t have any counselors at all, according to the report from the Department of Health and Human Services.

The improvement is partly due to the agency nearly doubling what it pays licensed therapists working in schools. The rate for a 30-minute session has jumped from $37 to $71 since 2022, according to the department.

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The department hit its goal: In September of 2023, schools had one counselor for every 653 students, the most recent report found. Overall, the number of mental health counselors working in schools went from 600 in January 2022 to 1,200 in September 2023.

Every district in the state had at least one counselor as of September, according to the report. In some districts, counselors spend all day every day of class in an assigned school, while in others they rotate from school to school.

The numbers are still far below recommendations of one counselor for every 250 students set by the American School Counselors Association. Nationwide, the average is closer to 400 students per counselor, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

The long-term goal for South Carolina is to have one therapist for every 325 students. The biggest thing standing in the way of that is that the state just mental health clinicians to fill the need, said Jeff Leieritz, spokesman for the state’s Medicaid agency.

The agency’s report came out a day after Gov. Henry McMaster touted the progress in his State of the State address with a preview of the survey’s findings.

“In just the past two years, we have made significant progress in providing school-based mental health services to school-aged children,” McMaster said Thursday in a statement. “With an ongoing mental health crisis, especially among our young people, it is critical that we continue to build upon these efforts and ensure mental health resources are available and accessible to our state’s children.”

While children can get therapy outside of school, they are 21 times more likely to use mental health services available in their school, according to findings by the South Carolina School Behavioral Health Academy. That makes getting counselors into schools even more essential, said the state’s Medicaid director, Robby Kerr.

And the need for mental health services is growing.

Nationally, suicide rates for people ages 10 to 24 increased 62% from 2007 to 2021, . In 2021, 2.5 of every 100,000 children in South Carolina died by suicide, according to data from the state .

Beyond pay therapists more, changing how they’re paid also helped South Carolina’s numbers.

The state Medicaid agency changed its policy to make it easier for schools to hire private clinicians and still send the cost to the agency, where before the need was filled by the state’s mental health workers.

That opened the door for districts to hire their own counselors, which was something nearly 60% of district leaders said they would prefer, according to the 2022 report.

As of the 2023 survey, around 600, or about half, of all in-school mental health counselors were employed by their districts instead of a state agency. School districts still have the option of partnering with the state Department of Mental Health or doing a hybrid model mixing state workers with private clinicians.

District-employed counselors can spend more time in schools instead of jumping from place to place, and less turnover means students are seeing the same person consistently, Leieritz said.

More counselors also means more support for students in crisis. Clinicians overwhelmed with day-to-day sessions often didn’t have the time to help children having mental health emergencies, leaving those situations in the hands of untrained nurses or administrators, the 2022 report said.

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