A Hands-On Approach in a Hands-Off World

By: Madalynn Owens

Dr. Sarah Owens is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Missouri, as well as the Associate Director of the Boone County Schools Mental Health Coalition. Her work centers around providing behavioral health care for children and families.

Dr. Owens is a Missouri native, but spent the majority of her childhood in Overland Park, Kansas. She returned to Missouri to complete her undergraduate degree at Drury University in Springfield. As an undergraduate, she worked with children in multiple settings, including at a child advocacy center and rural behavioral health system. During this time, she was inspired to further her education in order to impact as many people as she could.

“I think just engaging with kids and seeing just how green and young and eager they are for help was really inspiring to me,” Dr. Owens said. “Ultimately, I have always wanted to do research and find solutions for things that need to be solved so I think I was being further ingrained with that purpose.”

After graduating from Drury, Dr. Owens moved to Edwardsville, Illinois to complete her Master’s degree in Clinical Child and School Psychology at Southern Illinois University (SIUE).

“There aren’t a lot of programs that focus specifically on children in the clinical psychology world, but that was one of them,” Dr. Owens said. “That’s kind of where I learned how I could really impact youth through the school system, and more kids at one time.”

This path brought her back to her home state to complete her Ph.D. in School Psychology at the University of Missouri. In addition to her years of academic training, Dr. Owens noted that her initial interest in psychology was sparked when she was in high school.

“I had a few friends who really struggled with mental health problems and I did as well. I experienced the loss of a family member and had struggled with my identity when I struggled with some sports and sports teams,” Dr. Owens said. “I just happened to be in a group of friends where I was one of the go to people for support. It really got me interested in how we can better position schools to recognize what students were experiencing.”

Using applied research to understand childhood behavioral health

Research in the psychology field looks different than what people typically think of when they imagine research, especially the kind of work that Dr. Owens does. She calls it applied research — analyzing things as they are happening in regards to child mental and behavioral health.

This kind of research works on coming to conclusions through work done with children in a real-world setting and analyzing to see what changes from day to day. Instead of inviting people into a lab setting, she works with children in their environments.

“In some of the middle schools in Boone County, we utilized an intervention program that was kind of newer,” Dr. Owens said. “It was developed in Missouri with a collaboration of others that’s brief succession intervention to target a variety of mental health needs.”

Adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic

As the Associate Director of the Boone County Mental Health Coalition, Dr. Owens is often working with children in these applied research settings by analyzing what is going on in their environment and bringing behavioral and mental health care to them. The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has increased accessibility issues with these services.

“By delivering these services and supporting these children at school, we were able to reduce a lot of the barriers that come up, like transportation to outpatient therapy,” Dr. Owens said. “Well, when you’re in school you don’t need that transportation aspect. Anybody could benefit from this program.”

There were other issues that Dr. Owens and her team came across when trying to deliver behavioral health services to students throughout the pandemic. Some students didn’t have reliable access to the internet throughout the school day and couldn’t access the virtual services provided. Other students had to share devices with their siblings or didn’t have devices at all.

“The isolation for many youth became really problematic,” Dr. Owens said. “Not being able to see other humans or maintain close relationships with their peers or teachers has definitely been hard on students. When you’re struggling socially, emotionally, or behaviorally academic concerns can come up as well. They’re very interrelated.”

Working with schools to screen for early risk factors

Another aspect of the Boone County Mental Health Coalition is screenings of children in K-12 schools in the county for early risk factors of mental health needs or issues. The screening is only half of the job, the Coalition then works with the schools to address those needs.

“Either putting intervention plans in place, providing counseling or therapy for those students, or connecting them with people in the community that can support them are all steps that we take with schools,” Dr. Owens said.

The Coalition also recently created a new position to fill a need they saw through these screenings. This position is called a Family Intervention Specialist, who works directly with families and kids who would benefit from having somebody that can help school and home communicate. These positions work with a pretty small caseload and can have a big impact on the students’ success.

To be effective, these screenings have to look different based on the ages of the students. Every student is screened through a teacher checklist. This checklist is completed for the entire classroom, to make it as efficient as possible for the teachers. This checklist takes about 10 to 15 minutes per classroom and is completed twice a year.

“We ask teachers things about academic competence, so are they showing up to school are they easily distracted, are they turning things in on time,” Dr. Owens said. “We also ask about social skills and peer relations, do they get along with others, are they able to calm down if they’re upset or angry.”

Once students get to the third grade they also complete an individual survey. These surveys check in on a variety of areas. The student surveys tend to involve more questions about their social skills and peer relations because it’s difficult for teachers to fully gauge that at times. Students are also asked about their feelings and actions over the past month, including questions about bullying and behavioral readiness.

Increasing Missouri’s mental health workforce

School psychologists and organizations like the Boone County Mental Health Coalition help create safe schools and positive learning environments for students. This process starts by looking at the school’s climate. After this analysis, they recommend strategies for students that are at risk and solutions to issues that are experienced by groups or multiple students at the school.

“One of the big things that’s impacting youth in Missouri is the shortage of educators,” Dr. Owens said.

In Missouri, there are about 2,500 to 3,000 students for every one school psychologist. In other states, this number is closer to 600 students for every one school psychologist. Dr. Owens mentioned that a shortage of school psychologists is just one example, there are shortages across the educational field.

“If we’re going to help our kids and keep programs like this, that shortage has to be addressed,” Dr. Owens said. “That’s kind of something we’re always working towards in our advocacy work is helping leaders in Missouri know that if we want to continue to produce these results for students we need more school psychologists, more social workers and more funding in general.”

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If you want to learn more about how COVID-19 has impacted student mental health, watch our September roundtable discussion: https://mostpolicyinitiative.org/event/back-to-school-during-a-pandemic-student-mental-health/