The value of prevention over intervention

What’s the return on investment for school districts and communities who focus on preventive programming to reduce risks and reverse rates of mental and behavioral health problems?

The emotional benefits to professionals, practitioners, educators and youth produce a high cost benefit.

Written by Tara Kher @mindtheclass

Autor: Adam Grant, Extracted 12.2022 at https://twitter.com/AdamMGrant

Let me start by sharing a story about our Founder and CEO, Nadine Wilches. As a licensed clinical social worker, she was no stranger to problems. But as the newly appointed director of a specialized school in 2012, she suddenly found herself drowning in them. With an average of seven incidents a day — ranging from emotional outbursts, aggression and violence  — the school was facing a serious crisis.

As head of school, she found herself racing to respond to each and every problem, fighting crisis after crisis on a seemingly never-ending basis.The final straw occurred one day when the unthinkable happened: at seven months pregnant, she was kicked in the stomach by a child experiencing an emotional outburst. 

Fortunately, there were no serious injuries. But this devastating experience took its toll. This was the incident that changed everything for her.

She decided to rethink the approach: rather than waiting for the problems to build, what if she were to get ahead of them instead? 

She gathered her team together to test this hypothesis out. And so they worked together to transform the emotional climate of the entire school. They restructured classrooms, moving furniture to create calm spaces inside classrooms, rather than outside. They created strengths based cheat sheets instead of behavior intervention plans. They started engaging professional teams in fulfilling learning, created mentorships and initiated a professional peer accolades board in the staff room. They met weekly with every classroom to strategically plan for proactive solutions to the most common problems (school avoidance) and the most obscure problems (a child throwing their feces) while also discussing ways to prevent burnout and overwhelm for professional teams. When the hallways were too noisy, they devised an art project to create noise dampening panels that hung from the ceiling. When the students were leaving campus to go downtown without permission, they began initiating downtown partnership experiences to engage students in the environment outside of the school walls. And countless other changes one by one. By the time they were finished, they went from seven crises per day to only seven crises in an entire year - it was a statistic she would never forget. The lesson was learned. The effort they poured into getting ahead of problems was the smartest investment they could have ever made.

And this led her to form another hypothesis. What if she could pay this forward to other schools?

Just as our practitioner was immersed in a chaotic environment, there are many teachers, practitioners, administrators and families out there who are experiencing similar situations. Schools around the country are currently facing a severe mental health crisis. According to the Office of the Surgeon General, “approximately 1 out of every 10 school-aged children experiences mental health problems that impair functioning, but in a given year, only about 20% of these children receive any mental health treatment (in Chatterji et al, 2004).

Poor mental health is costly. Problems such as high incidents of violence and aggression, low student attendance, dire academic performance, incessant counseling referrals and educator burnout can be catastrophic for schools. The average cost of a school-based screening program ranges from approximately 149 dollars to 234 dollars per student and the cost of the treatment program ranges from 90 dollars to 115 dollars (Chatterji et al, 2004). There is no denying that there is an urgent need to create emotionally healthier school settings. However, as mental health cases continue to soar, this raises the question of how schools can take on the immense financial burden. To add to their woes, public schools around the country are now facing an additional challenge: a critical shortage of the psychologists needed to administer these services. According to the National Association of School Psychologists (2018), public schools are short anywhere between 30,000-65,000 school psychologists. 

“The average school psychologist today is expected to serve over 200 students with identified needs - which leaves little to no time to support the other 1,200 enrolled students who could benefit from critical prevention and early intervention services provided by school psychologists” (NASP, 2018). 

With limited funding and a shortage of qualified support, the burden is hence thrust upon classroom teachers. It is no secret that the psychological well-being of students is deeply intertwined with that of their teachers. How can teachers inspire, energize and support their students each day if they themselves do not have the tools to cope with stressful situations and toxic environments? Not surprisingly, schools with unhealthy mental health climates often experience high rates of teacher turnover. Unfortunately, in the end, the worst victims are invariably the students themselves. And this is the biggest cost of all.

Luckily, it does not have to be this way.

Author/Illustrator: @lizandmollie, Extracted 12.2022 from https://www.instagram.com/lizandmollie

According to a recent study led by the World Health Organization, for every dollar spent on the treatment of anxiety and depression, there is a return of $4 in better health and ability to work. This means a big boost for countries’ development and economic growth in the long run - hence delivering a positive return on investment (Lancet, 2016). What if this type of approach was applied in schools: rather than waiting for the problems to build, what if we got AHEAD of them? What if we shifted our approach from reactive to proactive? 

Proactive mental health programs [such as Mind the Class] can yield a high return on investment for schools. Getting ahead of the problem can save some serious future costs and enhance the overall experience for everyone, children, teachers, administrators, practitioners and families alike. A 2015 study in secondary schools revealed that components of well-being such as comfort, self-confidence and cognitive ability were more highly developed in schools with high levels of psychological safety for teachers (Baeva &; Bordovskaia, 2015). With enhanced mental health in the workplace, educators are left feeling satisfied and fulfilled at work. This can help them gain more emotional bandwidth by being able to focus on other things. This, in turn, can have a reverberating effect on their students. The formula can be applied to any program and in the home and the message is clear: getting ahead of the problem helps everyone!

Proactive Schools = High Psychological and Economic ROI