UMSOM's National Center for School Mental Health brings expertise to Baltimore City and Prince George's County schools.
When schools shut down around the country in 2020, children’s lives were turned upside-down: learning via screens, physically distancing from friends, and worrying about a global pandemic.
Providing support for their emotional well-being and education has been at the forefront of many Americans’ minds. And a University of Maryland School of Medicine (UMSOM) organization — the National Center for School Mental Health (NCSMH) — is sharing its expertise to do just that.
The mission of NCSMH, founded in 1995, is to strengthen policies and programs in school mental health to improve learning and promote success for children. NCSMH clinicians have pivoted the services they provide in Baltimore City and Prince George’s County schools to provide tele-mental health and continue to offer an array of supports for thousands of students and their families.
“We are definitely seeing some increased anxiety and depression and feelings of isolation,” said NCSMH co-director Nancy Lever, PhD, associate professor, Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, UMSOM. “Students are missing being in the classroom, being able to see and experience the school setting, and have recess and do collaborative activities with their classmates. It definitely has been challenging for them not to have that in-person social-emotional learning and academic learning.”
Read more about the center's efforts in CATALYST magazine.
You can read the Spring 2021 issue of CATALYST magazine, which features stories on UMB students preparing and administering COVID-19 vaccines at the UMB vaccination clinic at the SMC Campus Center; research related to COVID-19 across all of our schools; features on the first recipient of The Honorable Elijah E. Cummings ’76 Scholarship Endowment, the Healing Youth Alliance, comedian-actor-doctor Ken Jeong, and much more at CATALYST magazine.