Davis High under-resourced in mental health care, students say 

PHOTO: Numbers from the Youth Truth Survey indicated that 12% of DHS students have seriously considered committing suicide in the past year and 34% feel that there is an adult at DHS they can talk with about personal problems.

By Mattias RowenBale,

BlueDevilHUB.com Staff–

Twelve percent of students at Davis High have seriously considered suicide in the last 12 months—yet both students and counselors feel that Davis High is underequipped in its abilities to support students facing a mental health crisis. 

This lack of support primarily manifests itself in two ways: insufficient availability of resources, and a support staff stretched to its limits. 

The Youth Truth Survey, administered in November 2021, surveyed 1,593 DHS students on a variety of topics including emotional and mental health. The same survey indicated that only 34% of students at DHS have an adult from school who they can talk to about their problems. Just 36% of students felt that their school had programs or services that could help them. 

These low survey numbers did not come as a surprise for the DHS counseling department, which is well aware that students need more than it can provide. 

“It’s a little bit impossible right now to accurately meet the needs of students with what we have and our staff,” counselor Katherine Parker said. 

According to Parker, the recommended number of students for a counselor to have on their caseload is 250. Each DHS counselor currently has 350. 

Jersey Kinney is one student who feels like their mental health needs have not been met in Davis Joint Unified School District. 

“I had to pretty much drop out of every single class because nobody was helping,” said Kinney, who has since transferred to Davis School for Independent Study. 

Junior Melody Tun has also struggled with her mental health for a few years, to the point of it interfering with school. 

“For the last two years . . . I was showing up (to school) maybe like half of the time because I physically could not get out of bed either because of depression or a panic attack,” Tun said. 

Recently Tun has been able to return more consistently to her classes partially through the support of her counselor, who has sent emails to her teachers asking them to give Tun extensions and additional help. However, Tun also feels that the counseling department has its limits. 

“(My counselor is) definitely putting in everything she can, but with some things you’re not going to get all the support you need,” Tun said. 

These kinds of stories are unfortunately familiar to Parker. 

“We know they’re struggling. We’re struggling because we want to help them and we don’t have the staff,” Parker said. 

According to Parker and Cara Messmore, the district’s director of student services, the understaffed counseling department is primarily due to a general lack of funds. 

“At the district level, we certainly would love to expand our counseling department, but we obviously have financial limitations,” Messmore said. 

However, both Messmore and Parker are proud of the additional support resources that counseling departments are able to provide for students. 

DJUSD has recently begun a partnership with the Communicare Clinic, located behind Sutter Davis Hospital, as well as another partnership with Auburn Davis Center for a Dialectical Behavior Therapy group. 

“I’m a big fan of partnering with the community because, you know, we can’t all do it all,” Parker said. 

Additionally, for students with severe mental health struggles, DJUSD also now has the ability to set them up with an outside program that will find and schedule therapy appointments. This year has also seen an increase in the amount of time that school-based mental health clinicians provide therapy on school sites. 

“We have definitely, as a district, made huge strides in providing mental health support,” Messmore said. 

However, these programs have limited openings, and students must be deemed significantly at risk to participate. 

“Everything’s limited: money, funding, staffing, unfortunately, which is crazy because it’s such a huge need,” Parker said.