Thanks very much for being here.
It's my pleasure.
So what stands out as real trouble areas in children's mental health in Wisconsin?
Well, we know from the most recent youth risk behavior survey that anxiety is up.
Half of our kids are feeling anxious all the time.
About a third are depressed on a daily basis.
They're feeling sad and hopeless every day for two weeks.
About 25% of kids are seriously considering suicide.
And if we start to look at subpopulations, marginalized groups, we see those numbers jump even higher.
So unfortunately these are trends that have been developing for more than a decade.
We'd like to really see them turn around, but this is what we're dealing with right now.
So I read that girls in particular report anxiety and depression for anxiety, well over half of them.
And your office said, quote, our girls are in trouble.
Well, what is driving this?
Well, girls identify academic pressures as number one, just like boys do.
But they have a lot of unique stressors on them.
There are so many messages for our girls about body image and even suicide.
When girls turn to social media, they are just being flooded with messages about being thinner, about ways to commit suicide.
There's just a lot going on there and we really need to help them as best as possible curate their social media use and do less of it.
Get away from it.
Because your report also discusses the fact that there is increasing screen time outside of school work.
How does that increasing time contribute to these things?
Well, in a number of ways, we know that it decreases the amount of time that kids spend in physical activity, which is a protective factor.
It decreases the amount of time they sleep at night, which is also very important for mental well-being.
And it decreases the time that they're interacting with other students and other people in their life on a personal basis.
And those things are very healthy.
What other external factors are driving over all mental health problems that kids worry about?
Well, when we look at all the data that we can find about kids, we see that they do identify academic issues as number one.
But after that, they look at things like they're concerned about climate change, they're concerned about school safety.
I think this new data shows that a very large percentage of kids don't feel safe at school.
So there's that.
There's gun violence and political divisiveness are all things that are adding up to their anxiety.
And a lot of that contributes to a lack of belonging.
That's the other factor that we are looking at most of all is belonging, because we see that as being critical to how kids feel about themselves,
whether they fit in at school, whether they show up at school, and then whether they succeed at academics,
which we know all of those things are important for their adult lives and for their earning power and careers as adults.
And so when we talk about belonging in a school community, that's amongst peers and teachers?
Yes, it's both.
Yes, in Wisconsin, we now have over 300 peer-led or student-led mental health groups that are helping to work on this problem.
They're learning about mental health and making this an issue, helping their friends.
We also see that a number of schools have a school relationship mapping activity that happens at the beginning of the year,
where they kind of map, you know, are there supportive adults in the school that match up with these students?
And if they're not, how can we make that happen?
Because I understand that supportive adults are really important to students' mental health.
They are, excuse me, we need more than parents to be engaged with kids.
And some of those supportive adults are at school.
It might be a teacher, it might be a school secretary, it might be a janitor.
It can be lots of different people who are just having positive interactions.
We know that simple interactions that last as little as 40 seconds can make a difference in how a student feels and reducing their anxiety.
You know, we talk about all these really difficult things around mental health for our K-12 students in Wisconsin,
but it's not as though this is a new thing.
It's been enduring.
Yes, unfortunately these trends, these lack of belonging, the increased anxiety, the increased depression has been accelerating for many years now.
And we know the screen times makes a difference.
I think smartphones make a difference.
There's a lot of study around that.
How is that affecting our kids?
And we really want kids and their parents to think about healthy brain development.
You know, we're really wired for connection as people.
That's how we work best is when we are connected to people.
So we need to think not just about physical health, but mental health.
What can the state do to help with this?
I think the number one thing is to increase sustainable funding for mental health supports at school.
We know that we are in a shortage of professional mental health providers.
But there are many things that we can do at school and we can create positive climates where kids feel like they belong.
We can support our academic teachers to be engaged in that activity, support their understanding of mental health.
So we need increased support funding for that.
And you know, in part, it's because we know that of kids who actually get support for their mental health,
75% of it get that at school.
So it's a critical place for us to invest in.
And we know that investments that have been made in the past have made a difference, but we need to make more.
And what can families do?
You know, the number one thing probably for families around screen time is to create a family media plan.
There are lots of tools for how to do that.
But create a plan so that everybody in the family is being conscious of how much time they're spending on screens and they're limiting it.
And so parents are modeling good screen time use.
Also encourage kids to get out, get some physical activity, and to engage in extracurricular activity.
We know that extracurricular activities are a very strong protective factor for kids.
So that's really important.
And for young people, think about what you're looking at online and how much time you're spending online.
Reduce your time online and increase your time hanging out with friends.
Alright, good advice.
Linda Hall, thanks very much. Thank you.
Thank you.
In the last month, they were hungry and, yeah, it's in Wisconsin.
Yeah.
Important point.
Yeah.
Alright, so now I think I'm ready for my little thing, so please stand by.
Okay.
Alright.
For more on this and other issues facing Wisconsin, visit our website at pbswisconsin.org and then click on the news tab.
To see all of our election coverage, visit wisconsinvote.org.
That's our program for tonight. I'm Frederica Freiberg.
Have a good weekend.
Thank you.