LENOX â Amid widespread reports of students facing COVID-related mental health and emotional adjustment issues, the five-year strategic plan adopted by the elected School Committee members last month includes immediate, priority attention to reentry challenges.
A recent national survey by the Education Week Research Center found that at least 25 percent of high school students reported fatigue, difficulty concentrating, feeling isolated from classmates and not finishing schoolwork. Distractions caused by pandemic-related anxieties, worries and fears plagued 21 percent of the students, the survey found.
During a recent remote presentation to the community, a section of the plan presented by Strategic Planning Committee member Erika Baluk-Shepardson, one of four district parents on the 15-member group, emphasized that âit will be critical to continue identifying and addressing mental health challenges triggered or intensified by the pandemic.â
NORTH ADAMS â The dread of going back to school. The fear of losing the time for therapy, once offices open up again. The anxiety of renewed socialization.
These are just some of the issues that the clinicians at 413 Theraworks have been helping their clients through, via remote therapy sessions, as the end of the coronavirus pandemic becomes a possibility and its aftereffects threaten to reverberate for years.
The practice has grown fivefold since Candace Wall opened its doors just ahead of the pandemic, in August 2019. Wall made her first hire that winter and brought on three more employees during the crisis, to deal with widespread anxiety, depression, grief and trauma brought on by COVID-19, in addition to the stressors of ordinary life.
NORTH ADAMS â The dread of going back to school. The fear of losing the time for therapy, once offices open up again. The anxiety of renewed socialization.
These are just some of the issues that the clinicians at 413 Theraworks have been helping their clients through, via remote therapy sessions, as the end of the coronavirus pandemic becomes a possibility and its aftereffects threaten to reverberate for years.
The practice has grown fivefold since Candace Wall opened its doors just ahead of the pandemic, in August 2019. Wall made her first hire that winter and brought on three more employees during the crisis, to deal with widespread anxiety, depression, grief and trauma brought on by COVID-19, in addition to the stressors of ordinary life.