Las Vegas Weekly
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Genevie Durano Sat, Feb 20, 2021 (2 a.m.)
Since schools shut down in March, Clark County School District’s early-warning system, which monitors students’ mental health episodes, has sent more than 3,100 alerts to district officials, according to a recent story in
The New York Times. That has prompted CCSD to hasten the return of in-person learning for some elementary school grades.
Those mental health issues are part of a nationwide trend that’s worrying mental health experts such as Dr. Lisa Durette, program director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship at UNLV. “There was a study through the University of Texas that pulled data for teens that were presenting to the emergency room for suicide attempt. And the data from the end of the last quarter of 2020, compared to last quarter of 2019, showed about a twofold increase in the rate of adolescents coming to the ER for suicide attempts and suicidal thoughts,” she says.