More Teens Reporting Mental Health Concerns Due To Pandemic, Lockdown

DULLES, VA — When the school year started last fall, many teens found themselves struggling with mental health issues as they were thrust back into their classrooms following two years of isolation.

"The pandemic had a really huge impact on their lives," said Val Walters, executive director of the Ryan Bartel Foundation. "They're social beings. They thrive on that social connection, and that was ripped away from them. And just as it started, it ended and we put them back into school."

A fourth-grader who left the sanctuary of their insulated classroom was now a middle-schooler, facing all of the trials a middle-schooler faces minus any transition period of socialization to help them cope with their new environment.

"It was a huge transition for kids, right?" Walters said. "And we're just expecting them to have grown and matured in those last two years. And they really haven't. So we're thinking about kids having two years of lacking that social growth that's needed for maturity."

While some students were able to return to school with new skills and closer relationships with their parents and families, the pandemic had a disproportionate impact on different communities within the teen population, according to Bethany Demers, an educational specialist in mental wellness at Fairfax County Public Schools.

Related: Mental Health, Gun Violence And Trauma Subjects Of Dulles Chamber Talk

"Other youth, especially those in marginalized communities, within the LGBTQ community, different ethnic minorities, they had a further impact from that pandemic," she said.

While some parents were able to help their children learn at home and provide emotional support during the pandemic, other parents had to go to work to support their families or they weren't able to work, which created an additional level of stress on the family.

"The other piece is that mental health concerns for youth were on the rise before the pandemic and I think sometimes we forget about that," Demers said. "Suicide was the third leading cause of death and now is the second leading cause of death [among teens]. Kids reporting symptoms of depression are increasing, so I think that that focus on upstream prevention is so important, especially now."

One upstream resource is the Ryan Bartel Foundation, a Loudoun-based non-profit that seeks to prevent youth suicide through awareness, educational programs and activities that help to empower young people, their families, and the community.

"We try to give kids the healthy coping mechanisms to deal with those inevitable ups and downs," Walters said. "What we're finding now is that kids who are coming to us are much more closer to a crisis situation or they are actively in crisis, where they're straight out of outpatient therapy or inpatient therapy."

The foundation is offering five to six, team-led programs a week to support children from 10 all the way up to 18 who are experiencing a mental health crisis.

"Kids are having a gamut of struggles, and maybe they can't quite define, 'Is it anxiety? Is a depression?'" Walters said. "They're not their same selves as they were prior to the pandemic."

Students in Fairfax County are also seeking mental health support through programs like Sources of Strength, which is designed to prevent teen suicide, and Our Minds Matter, a non-profit that supports most FCPS high schools.

"It's clubs that are meant to get kids connected again," Demers said. "We've lost that social connectedness. Phones served a purpose. Technology did serve a purpose and allowed us to connect in the past during the deep, dark pandemic. Now we have to help them learn to make those connections again."

Behaviors To Be Concerned About

For parents who may be concerned about their teen's mental health, Demers said to look for the following behaviors:

• Withdrawal from activities and people that they used to be really connected to. "It's normal to lose some of those childhood interests. But if you're withdrawing from everything, that's concerning."
• Major shifts in sleep and eating habits. "Oversleeping, under sleeping, sleeping during the day instead of at night."
• School avoidance. "Not going to school, missing classes."
• Substance use.
• Tearfulness. "Major mood shifts. We know mood shifts to some degree in adolescence are very typical."

"Those are those are some major red flags, and especially, if they're talking or writing about suicide or self harm, reach out and get support immediately," Demers said. "Every school in both [Loudoun and Fairfax counties] have counselors, social workers, and psychologists who will navigate those questions confidentially."

Coffee and Conversations On Mental Health

Val Walters, executive director of the Ryan Bartel Foundation, and Bethany Demers, an educational specialist in mental wellness at Fairfax County Public Schools, discussed the growing mental health crisis among teens during a July 13 coffee and conversation event hosted by the Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce at the Dulles Marriott. Dr. Suzanne Nixon, of Integrative, Counseling & Relationship Therapy, Inc., served as the event's moderator.

This was the second in a series of discussions the chamber is hosting to address mental issues affecting the wider community. Last month, the discussion was about the emotional trauma caused by the proliferation of mass shootings and gun violence across the country.

More information about the coffee and conversation series, as well as a list of mental health resources, are available on the Dulles Regional Chamber of Commerce's website.