56 min
Episode 8 - School Avoidance: It’s real and it’s not a crime w/ Jayne Demsky Mental Health Goes to School
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- Mental Health
School refusal or avoidance is a real problem that is not the same as not liking school. Some students miss school for weeks, months, or even entire academic years. The reasons students avoid or refuse to attend school are rooted in anxiety and are not just a desire to do something else. It’s not playing hooky.
Jayne Demsky started her journey with school refusal when it became a problem for her son. As she learned and traveled this path, she was determined that other parents and students shouldn’t have to feel alone or that they were bad people. The resources and connections that she has developed over the past decade are now available on her website School Avoidance Alliance.
One of the difficulties in addressing school refusal is that the anxiety signals leading up to a crisis typically happen at home and frequently aren’t recognized by caregivers or educators. Communication between the home and school is crucial to preventing an avoidance pattern from becoming a crisis.
Our conversation briefly touches on the challenges of chronic absenteeism, which has increased since the pandemic. We reference an article that describes ongoing research into defining and solving the problem of chronic absenteeism. Their data, which is still evolving, suggests that family engagement with schools correlates with improved attendance, and this overlaps with the need for school and family engagement in addressing school avoidance.
While acknowledging the severity of staffing shortages, Jayne reviews some key ways that schools can help caregivers connect with appropriate staff and resources. She also advocates for mental health education from the earliest grades so that students can better understand how their mental health is connected to their overall health and how they can use skills to help self-regulate and to know when they should seek help.
If you enjoy our content, please like and follow - and review if you can!
School refusal or avoidance is a real problem that is not the same as not liking school. Some students miss school for weeks, months, or even entire academic years. The reasons students avoid or refuse to attend school are rooted in anxiety and are not just a desire to do something else. It’s not playing hooky.
Jayne Demsky started her journey with school refusal when it became a problem for her son. As she learned and traveled this path, she was determined that other parents and students shouldn’t have to feel alone or that they were bad people. The resources and connections that she has developed over the past decade are now available on her website School Avoidance Alliance.
One of the difficulties in addressing school refusal is that the anxiety signals leading up to a crisis typically happen at home and frequently aren’t recognized by caregivers or educators. Communication between the home and school is crucial to preventing an avoidance pattern from becoming a crisis.
Our conversation briefly touches on the challenges of chronic absenteeism, which has increased since the pandemic. We reference an article that describes ongoing research into defining and solving the problem of chronic absenteeism. Their data, which is still evolving, suggests that family engagement with schools correlates with improved attendance, and this overlaps with the need for school and family engagement in addressing school avoidance.
While acknowledging the severity of staffing shortages, Jayne reviews some key ways that schools can help caregivers connect with appropriate staff and resources. She also advocates for mental health education from the earliest grades so that students can better understand how their mental health is connected to their overall health and how they can use skills to help self-regulate and to know when they should seek help.
If you enjoy our content, please like and follow - and review if you can!
56 min