Schools Seek To Define ​“Mental Health Days”

Hamden High Freshman Trevor Cadhey knows he’s allowed to take up to two ​“mental health days” off from school this year, but he isn’t sure under what circumstances he should use them.

School staffers and Board of Education members are grappling with the same question facing Cadhey and his peers — what is a mental health day? — while determining how to translate new state legislation concerning kids’ psychological health into district policy.

In July, Connecticut passed ​“An Act Concerning Social Equity And The Health, Safety and Education Of Children,” a bill that seeks to expand mental health services for youth. In addition to implementing revised suicide prevention training in local health departments, a small section of the bill asserts that students’ absences may be marked as ​“excused” if their guardian attributes the day off to the betterment of their child’s ​“emotional and psychological well-being.” 

Kids can receive up to two excused mental health days. They must be taken non-consecutively.

Hamden BOE’s Policy Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to begin the process of integrating that state law surrounding mental health days into their own local guidelines on absenteeism. 

“It’s important for the schools to recognize that students at times need to take a day to tend to their own self care. We want to ensure that they’re not penalized for taking those days and support them when they do need to take those days,” said Sue Smey, Hamden’s director of media, assessment and intervention. 

In Connecticut, a student’s absence is marked as excused so long as a parent sends in a note for the first nine days on which their child misses class. On day 10, students are excused only if they are absent due to a physical illness, the observance of a religious holiday, a death in the family, a mandated court appearance, lack of transportation that’s normally provided by a district, and/ or an ​“extraordinary educational opportunity.” The reasons, again, must be reported to the school by a student’s guardian.

Connecticut is now joining Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, Oregon, Virginia and Utah in validating students’ decision to stay home from school in the name of mental wellness.

Excused absences are still used to measure chronic absenteeism; a student is considered chronically absent when they miss 10 percent or more of a school year, or 18 days. Truancy, on the other hand, refers only to unexcused absences; a student is considered truant when they have at least four unexcused absences in one month or 10 unexcused absences in one school year. When a student becomes truant, the school is required to meet with the student’s guardian within 10 school days.

The passing of the policy comes right at a time when schools’ two biggest concerns include both high absenteeism and weakened student mental health. The pandemic has led to surges in behavioral concerns and student fights — as well as staff shortages and virus outbreaks causing class cancellations.

Across the district, fewer than 100 students have used the mental health days. Only one middle schooler has taken a mental health day as compared to 32 elementary students and 63 high schoolers. That’s out of 1,214 high schoolers, 851 middle schoolers, and 2,617 elementary students.

Smey said that families were informed about the state legislation via a short message from school administration in September. More students might use mental health days once the district determines a concrete plan to communicate the real meaning of the policy to parents, students and staff.

Pressure Cookers

“There’s a lot going on in Hamden,” Hamden High Junior Maddy Moro said, pointing to students bringing weapons into school and fighting on campus. ​“Walking into the school, you don’t even know if you’re safe. With the way they operate, nothing has lowered the risk … They definitely don’t have it under control.”

Moro pointed to metal detectors as one source of discomfort and anxiety in school. ​“There’s a lot of sexism … Extensive searches can make women uncomfortable, depending on where the wand beeps.”

Moro argued that the everyday anxieties of being a teen, and going through high school at a particularly complicated and harsh point in time, are enough to merit two of 180 days off. 

“It seems reasonable,” Moro said, though she noted that she has yet to use a mental health day — because, until this reporter told her she could, she did not know that was an option. She added that her mental wellbeing ​“would be a little embarrassing to talk about” with her mom.

Unlike some of her friends, Moro said, she doesn’t have a diagnosed mental illness. But she relates to the struggle described by her depressed peers of getting out of bed each day to get to class. ​“I feel that way all the time,” she said.

“Nobody wants to go to school.”

“I wanna be in school more!” Trevor Cadhey countered.

Cadhey had just spent a whole week at home after he came into close contact with a Covid-positive friend.

“It was horrible,” he said. ​“I missed seeing all my friends.”

Down the line, he does think he’ll use a mental health day. His mom is a social worker, and encourages him to prioritize his mental health. She also taught Cadhey that skipping school can be one way of avoiding problems rather than facing them head on.

So, Cadhey said, even though his mom is open to conversations about emotional wellbeing, it is hard for him to differentiate between when he ​“needs” a day off and when he just doesn’t feel like going to school.

Others were content with a more casual definition of ​“mental health day.”

“It’s a day to yourself to catch up on anything that you need, or just a break from everything that’s going on,” said senior Mariah Nuton. ​“We should definitely have more than two.”

“I haven’t personally asked for one yet,” she said, ​“but if I do I’ll use it mainly around this time,” as she finishes up college applications.

At last Tuesday night’s meeting, members of the Board of Education Policy Committee questioned what leeway the district has to alter the policy and fit it to Hamden’s values.

“Do we have to adopt this?” asked BOE member Gary Walsh, expressing doubt that the days would successfully counter familial stigma surrounding mental health.

​“The legislature 20 years ago would create a framework around a law and create a lot of discretion for the local district,” Superintendent Jody Goeler said.

But now, BOE member David Asberry jumped in, there isn’t much ​“wiggle room” to alter the plan. For example, the district is not allowed to increase or decrease the number of mental health days kids can take.

“What is also important,” Sue Smey offered, ​“is any regulations we develop to support the policies — the regulations that spell out exactly what our practice is going to be, how we’re going to communicate this with families, how administrators work with families on these two days.”

The Policy Committee didn’t dive into those questions. It did vote to pass the new state language on to the full BOE, which will continue to develop and fine-tune the policy and its rollout within the district over the next three to five months.

Unintended Consequences

Hamden Middle School Social Worker Glenn Xavier spoke to the Independent about the difficulties of creating a communication blueprint.“

“Giving a description of what a mental health day is,” he argued, ​“is virtually impossible.”

Like most school staffers, Xavier is still working to understand the policy and how it will function specifically within Hamden.

“I was hoping that the policy referred to students seeking professional help on those days,” Xavier said. Any student who is struggling with mental health should be receiving support at school, he argued. ​“I have a difficult time seeing the benefit of having students just remain at home.”

“The concept is a great concept on one hand,” Xavier said, acknowledging the ideal that instituting mental health days could open dialogue around psychological wellbeing and combat stigma felt by youth.

“And on the other hand, we acknowledge that we want kids in school as much as they can and provide the mental health support that they need here.”

“Our real goal is to address absenteeism. In this district specifically, absenteeism is an issue,” Xavier noted. 

Chronic absenteeism has skyrocketed through the pandemic compared to three years ago. But Hamden’s chronic absenteeism rates were still high pre-pandemic. For example, 16 percent of students were reported chronically absent at Hamden High through the 2017 – 2018 school year compared to 40.5 percent between 2020 and 2021. That jump is similar across schools. (Read through all of Hamden schools’ chronic absenteeism rates over time here.)

“You’re really just putting a band-aid on when you give them a mental health day — you’re not really addressing the base concerns,” Xavier argued. ​“I would certainly like to explore any reasons why students need that mental health day. What is it about their lives that’s so overwhelming? Let’s address that issue.”

The lack of clarity concerning the definition of a mental health day, Xavier warned, could have the most significant consequences for students who struggle with severe mental illness.

“Do you want a student that is depressed at home alone?” Xavier asked. ​“The reality of it is that Hamden is a middle-class population and most parents are working during the day.” Xavier suggested that with most parents at work, schools could effectively further isolate students from their peers and school community by sending the wrong message that students who feel low should stay home and take care of themselves.

Students with families that stigmatize mental health do not have a strong understanding of the implications of or resources surrounding psychological wellness, and/or do not have the means to provide their children with mental health supports, will be placed in disproportionately paradoxical and possibly unhealthy positions by the policy, Xavier predicted. 

He argued that the aim should be to provide strong mental health support in schools themselves, ensuring that students feel safe expressing their needs, and training teachers to more effectively screen kids and respond to their psychological needs.

“As a social worker myself, even if students aren’t going to class, just having them here in the school” is safer, Xavier said.

By getting more students who are regularly absent back into the classroom, Xavier and his colleagues will have a greater chance to get to know students well and screen them for abnormal behaviors.

That’s what Xavier does each morning at the middle school.

“I stand out in the hallway as kids come in, looking for behaviors that are not normal for that particular student. They’re also screened by their homeroom teachers. That’s an opportunity to check in with students. The mornings are usually busy for me because of those screenings,” he said.

Xavier added that while mental health days could most hurt those youth who suffer deeply from mental illness, the days off could inform a bigger belief that public schools are not responsible for effectively meeting students’ mental health needs. That could reverse the idea that skipping school is a possible deflection of students’ accountability to their own wellbeing.

“Having these mental health days will send a different message to certain students,” Xavier said. ​“Once you give them an inch, they’ll go. It’s something that will really go in a spiral downward.” 

In other words, mental health days may fundamentally fail to address the reasons students often dread going to school. They may give students more steam to stay home rather than commit to their classes and school community. They may fail to support students by separating them from the mental health resources that do exist in their school environment.

“There’s a lot of discussion that needs to be had and a number of players need to be involved in drafting a policy” that will help students connect to the idea of mental health and communicate their own psychological state, Xavier said.

“It’s very tricky and we have to look at how best we can service each student.”