Overall student mental health is in crisis and this includes the migrant students as well who have been coming to New York City.
Mental health problems can affect many of students’ lives, which reduces their quality of life, academic achievement, physical health and can negatively impact relationships with friends and family members.
Mental health can even further distress migrants due to all they have been through to get here. It can be difficult for migrant families to access mental health services in the United States, so Family Health Centers at NYU Langone Health has tried to alleviate this.
The Family Health Centers at NYU Langone Health has made efforts to recruit bilingual-bicultural providers to meet the mental health needs of newly arrived children and adolescents.
They run school behavioral health programs in 24 schools in NYC that further meet the mental health demands of migrants.
Dr. Ruth Gerson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and the associate medical director for ambulatory behavioral health at Family Health Centers at NYU Langone, says these behavioral health programs take a holistic approach with the students and families.
“Our clinicians work closely with our programs throughout NYU to be able to not only meet the needs of the students but also to be able to connect families with other resources they might need,” Dr. Gerson said. “We know that one of the most important things in terms of a young person’s well being is their family health and mental wellness and sense of security.”
The behavioral health programs are available for migrant students who need any mental health support and services. They can connect them with a wide range of other family support services that NYU and their community partners offer.
This is to ensure they are meeting all the needs of the migrants and that they get the help and care that’s needed. They make every effort to make sure all of NYU Langone’s resources are at their disposal for the young people and their families.
The behavioral health programs are throughout Brooklyn including in Red Hook, Coney Island, Sunset Park, Canarsie and Bedford Stuyvesant.
The program is in one school in Astoria, Queens. They plan to expand into Manhattan soon.
A few schools were interested in starting behavioral health programs in the coming weeks and then even more will get programs when the next school year begins.
These programs are able to meet the mental health demands that the students have.
NYU Langone has a grant from the federal government that recognizes and helps support and expand their trauma program and in turn ensures that the kids they see get the absolute best quality of trauma therapies.
They not only make sure to provide behavioral health but they also provide for their physical health in many of the schools where they have services that are integrated and easily accessible for the kids and families.
“Many young people who have migrated have not been able to have their physical health taken care of and they have been exposed to injuries along the path of migration,” Dr. Gerson said. “So ensuring that the we are able to meet all of their needs.”
They try to make sure that through the environment that they provide that the kids can feel a sense of safety and physical comfort, which in turn is critical for their mental wellness after going through so much in their journey.
The NYU Langone staff does a lot of work to make sure the migrants get the resources they need to stay in school. This entails helping them catch up if needed and get special education support.
A recent study from the United Hospital Fund said that there are 94 million days of school missed by adolescents due to unmet mental health concerns.
Since services are easily accessible in the school for those who are struggling it is a great resource. The families don’t have to struggle to find a clinic or struggle to find someone to treat them in their language.
“Our clinics are able to make sure that they are not missing school due to those mental health needs,” Dr. Gerson said. “We can catch things earlier with high quality evidence based trauma treatments to make sure kids get the relief they need so they can stay in school.”
NYU Langone works to assess the families social support, practical needs and their social determinants of health, which is the idea that our health is impacted by things in our environment.
This can range from the neighborhood having a lot of pollution, having violence that puts people at risk or not having access to healthy food.
It’s the idea that the the socio-economic background we come from and the life experiences one has can really impact peoples health.
“In order to achieve true wellness we need to not just treat the physical ramifications of health, but also to support people in having healthier environments and address the issues in their environment that might be making them vulnerable to illness,” Dr Gerson said.
The program has care managers who are invested in supporting families so they understand all the different types of resources in terms of housing that they are eligible for.
“We have a wonderful program called the family support services program and our therapists very quickly refer to that program to do a comprehensive assessment of family needs,” Dr. Gerson said. “The staff have a network of resources to tap into to get case management that they might need.”
This is helpful since they might not have the language skills to navigate this on their own.
The program makes an effort to help the migrants in regards to family support counseling, food nutrition support, language classes, job training for parents and case management.
“Some of those programs we offer within our system and some of them we partner with our community engagement partners to offer them,” Dr. Gerson said. “I am always amazed at the range of things we are able to connect families with.”
The school behavioral health programs will bring resources to schools from larger NYU Langone coat and food drives.
A big source of stress might be what is causing the most amount of pain at the time. It might be support around nightmares or memories of traumatic experiences from their journey.
“If we can help people address their concrete stresses like food, clothing, jobs or language skills, then it opens up space for people to be able to pay attention to solving their mental health needs,” Dr. Gerson said.
The amount of extra help a child receives if they arrive after the school year starts is circumstantial since they might have missed several months of school in the process of migrating and then some do not have that disruption.
They help families get the testing and Individualized Education Plan (IEP) needed to help navigate the adjustment whether the transition is in the middle or beginning of the school year.
The program will also connect monolingual Spanish speaking patients to bilingual mental health providers via tele-health if a bilingual therapist is not available on-site at their school.
“That can be really nice for a young person to feel like they have that deeper in person relationship,” Dr. Gerson said. “We do whatever the young person feels is the best fit for them.”
“We know that the migrant youth require a specialized type of support that is understanding their culture and support that is understanding their individual, family and community experiences,” Dr. Gerson said. “Studies have shown that a lot of migrant youth nationally do not access care because they fear that they will not be understood and not be trusted.”
NYU Langone is committed to providing mental health and services to migrant youth in a way that understands their experiences and understands the trauma that they have been through.
They provide trauma informed care, specialized treatment and have bilingual providers so young people and families can be seen by people who understand their culture and their language.
