TRI-COUNTY — The need for mental and behavioral health resources in schools has never been more dire, with rates of depression, anxiety and suicidal behavior among Texas students on the rise.
Nearly one in two youth felt sad and hopeless for a prolonged period in the past 12 months — a 16% increase from 2019 and a 53% increase from 2011 — and one in three youth reported persistently feeling stressed, anxious or depressed during the previous month, according to a Texas Education Agency (TEA) report on mental health in public schools published in 2023. Students of color and queer students are particularly at risk.
The COVID-19 pandemic and concerns about school safety — in the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde — are often cited as reasons for the sharp decline in student mental health. Outside of the home, educators play a vital role in identifying students experiencing mental illness. (School staff are also required by law to report suspected child abuse or neglect within 48 hours.)
Alpine ISD Superintendent Michelle Rinehart said part of the role of schools to produce productive members of society involves addressing mental and behavioral wellness in addition to academic achievement. “The school is given this opportunity to really play a pivotal role in helping kids learn skills and work through some challenges that they might be coming in with,” Rinehart said.
But local school districts in the tri-county area face several challenges, including finding certified counselors, funding those positions and ensuring individuals in those roles have time to address students’ mental health needs.
Districts vary widely in their systems of support for student mental health. Smaller districts like Fort Davis and Marfa ISDs do not have full-time counselors but work with “Student Success Coordinators,” whose duties are similar to counselors and include testing, college and career readiness and scheduling.
According to the Texas Education Code, schools with fewer than 500 students are not required to employ a full-time, certified counselor, but may bring someone on part time or contract those services out when needed. Fort Davis ISD Superintendent Graydon Hicks said the district would reach out to the Region 18 Education Service Center to bring in an outside counselor if students or staff experience a traumatic event.
After the murder of teacher Sophia Sullivan in 2018, Marfa ISD collaborated with Region 18 to bring in counselors from the surrounding area to help support grieving staff and students. Marfa ISD Student Success Coordinator David Natividad, who provides traditional counseling to students, said the district maintains that relationship with Region 18 and would reach out to them in the event of a tragedy.
Larger districts like Alpine and Presidio ISDs have several full-time counselors. Alpine ISD employs three full-time certified counselors, one on each campus, and contracts with a licensed professional counselor (LPC) who provides additional counseling to students one day a week.
Rinehart said that so far this year, the LPC has worked with around 50 students and 20 different families, but there is more “demand and need than time available.” Alpine ISD has 900 students enrolled ranging in age from 5 to 18, meaning the mental health support students require varies widely, she said. “The mental wellness needs of students, just like adults in the community, are quite expansive,” Rinehart said.
The American School Counselor Association recommends a maximum ratio of one counselor to every 250 students. That is essentially the ratio at Marfa ISD. Natividad, who is currently pursuing his counselor certification, said the fact that Marfa ISD is small plays to its advantage, allowing him to meet with more students one-on-one.
“Schools that have 1,500 students or 3,000 students, 14 counselors with hundreds of students each, it’s a little bit easier here,” Natividad said. “When we do have students dealing with issues, whether it be mental health issues, anxiety, depression, I get a chance to sit and talk with them and evaluate how they’re doing.”
The LPC Alpine ISD works with — which the district can pay for due to an Office of the Governor grant focused on trauma-informed counseling — is able to provide more therapeutic counseling services than the full-time counselors, Rinehart said. The district used to have a full-time LPC who was brought in with grant funds after a school shooting in 2016 in which a 14-year-old freshman killed herself and injured another student.
The district tried to hire another LPC in 2022 but was unsuccessful. Rinehart said LPCs are in short supply in the area as is, and school districts simply can’t compete with salaries LPCs can earn in private practice.
School counselors themselves are hard to come by. Alpine ISD’s high school counselor is retiring this summer after 18 years with the district and will need to be replaced, a situation Rinehart sees as a challenge due to the basically nonexistent applicant pool. “It’s not: post a position and have 10 people certified, interested and willing,” Rinehart said. “It’s part of the statewide teacher shortage that we’re seeing extended into the counselor space as well.”
The district is working with Texas Tech’s University Health Sciences Center to create pathways for school counselors to become LPCs, allowing them to earn the required 3,000 hours of training with district internships, in the hopes they will train up and retain counselors familiar with certain age groups of students. “It may allow them to specialize further in meeting the needs of those ages, in a way that someone in private practice in the community probably couldn’t specialize in such a nuanced way,” Rinehart said.
That LPC program expansion is included in a grant Alpine ISD recently won from the TEA. Alpine ISD was one of two districts in West Texas to receive the Stronger Connections grant — a $1 million boost for student wellness programs. The district plans to spend the money on hiring more LPCs, a snack program and $300,000 for capital improvements, primarily upgrades to its outdoor recreation spaces.
That money will quickly run out though, Rinehart said, without “significant funding or hardly any funding from the state to fund mental wellness resources at school districts on a continuing basis.”
Rinehart understands the need for greater mental health resources for local children on a personal level. One of her two children was involved in a dog attack this past fall, and the family traveled all the way to Midland-Odessa to get the child counseling they needed after the traumatic event, an effort she acknowledged few have the resources to accomplish.
“What it takes to be able to do that — to go three hours away, to take off work, to have that flexibility and financial ability — versus having some of our systems locally that could provide that level of therapeutic counseling here,” Rinehart said.
She sees the opportunity for Alpine ISD to become a center for mental healthcare in town, connecting “mental wellness resources to a pretty significant section of our community’s population, through the students that are in public school and through their families,” Rinehart said.
In addition to Natividad offering counseling services, Marfa ISD has a memorandum of understanding with PermiaCare, the local mental health authority, and will refer students to them when needed. Natividad said a few MISD students also take advantage of a program called Texas Child Health Access to Telemedicine (TCHAT), a free telehealth service connecting students to LPCs and psychiatrists offered through Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in El Paso.
But Marfa ISD’s counseling programs have, at times, fallen short, according to the mother of a female 13-year-old Marfa ISD student — who wished to remain anonymous to protect her child’s identity — dealing with ongoing mental health issues. The mother said her daughter was experiencing bullying and panic attacks at school, and the situation recently worsened, leading the family to pursue help in a city hours away.
Her daughter previously met with a local LPC last summer and this fall but “didn’t connect with him,” and the family was not made aware of any other options for continued counseling. She said the school was aware of her daughter’s mental health issues but didn’t do enough to intervene. “I think they failed on that, just recognizing the signs of mental health within my daughter and not acting swiftly enough,” the mother said. She said she also had a hard time getting in touch with school officials.
The mother said the school nurse did offer support to her daughter, and school administrators were concerned about her daughter’s situation, but said there wasn’t much they could do without concrete evidence of bullying. Natividad and Superintendent Arturo Alferez declined to comment on the matter, citing an “ongoing investigation” and protecting the privacy of the student.
The mother said the students’ “unmonitored” access to cell phones throughout the school day is a concern of hers, as is the lack of bullying prevention or awareness programs.
Natividad said the district does have mechanisms in place, including his counseling services and TCHAT, to prevent and address bullying. “There are things in place to definitely help both those who bully, try to help them to stop, and of course there’s stuff in place to help and get resources to those who feel that they have been bullied,” he said.
Alferez stressed that the district communicates at the beginning of the school year to all students that bullying will not be tolerated and offers instruction on how to report bullying of themselves or other students to administrators.
Natividad, who graduated from Marfa High School 30 years ago, agreed one of the main things that has changed in regards to youth mental health is their exposure to endless information through the internet and social media, where they may wind up negatively comparing themselves to others. “A lot of information is false. A lot of information is harmful,” Natividad said. “This is the first generation of students who are not really experiencing life, they’re watching others experience life through social media.”
He said Marfa ISD has a solid support system for students, but more resources can always be sought out. “I think we have a great foundation here,” Natividad said. “Great teachers are helping our students, but we’re always ready to connect more with resources that can help our students, especially in the area of mental health.”
In light of her daughter’s recent mental health issues, the mother said she has felt support from other parents and students, which helped her realize their family is not alone in dealing with a teen in a mental health crisis. “A lot of people have just been suffering in the dark because there’s not much awareness,” she said.
Presidio ISD has made strides this past year regarding mental health training and services for staff and students. In addition to two full-time counselors — one who is certified with the other working on their certification — the district works with Victor Hernandez, an LPC who also serves as a clinical director at PermiaCare.
Hernandez, who previously served as a full-time counselor with the district, combined his knowledge of the schools and the healthcare system to standardize and streamline communication between parents, teachers and clinicians. School counselors will refer a student to a clinician if it is determined psychotherapy or medication is likely needed.
Hernandez said referrals previously lacked proper documentation of student’s situations, requiring clinicians to start from scratch. His solution was to create a counselor referral form, which all teachers and administrators have access to, that is in compliance with medical privacy laws and able to be shared with outside agencies. “It’s protected by HIPAA, by FERPA, but it also helps you to communicate with outside professionals,” Hernandez said.
The paper trail provided by the counselor referral form also allows district staff to access historical information on a particular student’s mental health. “In that system, everything’s documented. Let’s say you were in middle school and for some reason, you start to have suicidal ideations,” Hernandez explained. “The counselor or the middle school [administrators] will read your history so they will know that in fourth grade your parents separated, you were seen by the counselor, then you stopped and now something’s happening.”
Hernandez has also worked to improve counselor follow-up when referrals are made to outside agencies. He noted that in the past, counselors would refer students to clinics like PermiaCare, but did not keep track of their treatment after that.
Presidio ISD is also conducting more mental health training for teachers that covers how to identify students with mental health needs, how to notice bullying and launch an investigation and improved disciplinary tactics. On each campus there are five administrators who have undergone even more extensive training and can be called upon in case of a mental health crisis. The district also has plans in place for a trauma-informed response in the unfortunate case of a school tragedy.
The district’s counseling team is expanding mental health and wellness training for its students, raising awareness on how to ask for help, how to report bullying, and providing motivational speakers via frequent pep rallies. In January the district opened “zen rooms” on each campus, neutral, relaxing spaces designed to host individual and group counseling sessions. Hernandez said so far the zen rooms are being regularly utilized by students and staff.
Hernandez said Presidio ISD is also working to comply with SB 179, a law passed in 2021 that requires 80% of counselors’ time be put towards counseling duties outlined in the Texas Education Code, rather than on testing administration. “The primary responsibility of a school counselor is to counsel students to fully develop each student’s academic, career, personal, and social abilities,” the code states.
Part of Hernandez’s reasoning for leaving his full-time counselor position with the district in 2020 was due to the fact that student mental health was not a priority of the previous administration, which put greater emphasis on standardized testing, he said. “Most counselors in a lot of the schools, they’re not used for counseling, they’re used for testing and for administrative duties,” Hernandez said.
He said implementing several mental health strategies on a district-wide level is challenging, requiring staff and administrator buy-in, and work still needs to be done, but the need among students is undeniable. “Anxiety, depression, suicide has been growing,” Hernandez said.
The Family Crisis Center of the Big Bend presents on several mental-health-related topics including bullying, suicide, teen dating violence, sexual assault and healthy relationships to area high schools and middle schools. Community Educator and Client Advocate Virginia Sandoval visits with students in Alpine most often and also travels to Sanderson, Marathon, Fort Davis and Marfa to make presentations throughout the school year.
Sandoval said the center’s approach is to raise awareness of common mental and behavioral health issues and prevent younger generations from perpetuating cycles of abuse. “We have been getting into the area schools, because these are huge problems that we’ve noticed and trying to get them to understand the significance of what is going on at an earlier age, I think, benefits the students,” Sandoval said. “I think they’re willing to listen.”
She said the Family Crisis Center is working to lessen the stigma around sexual assault and other abuse, and she has had students come up to her after presentations who do open up about those experiences and ask her for help.
“We see generations of victims, of survivors. If this is what they’re learning at home, they think that’s normal to grow up in, in a home that can be abusive, violent,” Sandoval said. “We want them to understand there’s resources out there for them. There’s the Family Crisis Center, there’s PermiaCare, there’s the school system, there’s trusted adults they can turn to; we don’t want them to think they’re alone.”
Sandoval arms students with information on where to find help, including the Family Crisis Center hotline at 1-800-834-0654, loveisrespect.org, thehotline.org, 988 Lifeline and the national sexual assault hotline RAINN at 1-800-656-4673.
“We want to be one of the resources people think about,” Sandoval said. “We want to be involved because it takes a community.”
This story is part of a series on mental health in the Big Bend funded by the Presidio County Community Foundation.