A Moment with Dr. Moore
Minding Our Teachers’ Mental Health
COVID has led to a mental health crisis among our children. The U.S. Surgeon General called attention to this “urgent public health issue” in a recent report. At the University of Oregon, Dr. Phil Fisher and his research team tracked child well-being since the onset of the pandemic. The report they produced showed that mental distress in children has more than doubled. And Yale professor Dr. Walter Gilliam also raised the alarm when he surveyed 50,000 preschool teachers across the country. He showed that 56 percent of teachers found children to be more aggressive, contrary or hyperactive than they used to be, and 55 percent found children more anxious, withdrawn or shy.
Nationwide, it’s a familiar story. Children are showing signs of trauma caused by disruptions to normal routines, social isolation, declines in household income and loss of loved ones, as experts point out. “I’ve had to remind people every single day that we’re still in a worldwide pandemic,” said Kyle Ohl, a mental health consultant for the Grand Beginnings early childhood council, based in Granby, Colorado. Often, Ohl said, small children act out—whether by hitting a friend, hiding under a table or howling when parents leave them at child care—because they’re feeling overwhelmed and insecure. “What’s interesting is we’ve always had these kids. It’s just that there’s more of them right now.” And that’s tricky for early childhood teachers who are now also dealing with outsized stress.