KELSO — When she entered the Kelso School District 15 years ago, Rebecca Viscuso said people doubted the need for an elementary school counselor.
But today, she and other counselors are handling more students with anxiety, emotional outbursts and suicidal thoughts. They say it’s in part because of bullying and social media dependence, though there are other, home-life factors at work, too.
“When you’re not in the school system, seeing the behaviors that we’re seeing, you would have no idea as to what we are actually doing,” Viscuso said. “It’s definitely not just playing with Play-Doh and toys with the kids.”
School counselors say they have become a safety net for students needing mental health or behavioral support, yet legislative attempts to ease the burden failed over the last two years.
Statistics bear out Viscuso’s concerns. For example, the number of Washington youth between 12 and 17 years old with a recent major depressive episode increased from 8.9 percent to 12.7 percent in the last 15 years, according to a 2019 report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. That’s slightly higher than the national average.
In his eight years at St. Helens Elementary, Longview counselor Joel Thomas says he’s seen more students with anxiety, anger and depression.
“A lot of kids also come in with a lack of basic social-emotional skills,” Thomas said.
Ken Davis, who runs Kelso High School’s new outpatient substance use disorder program, said social media has caused both adults and children to forget how to communicate.
“Our anger, all our emotions are through social media,” Davis said. “We just don’t know how to relate to each other.”
Kelso High School counselor Makaio Mobbs said he’s noticed that young children seem to find more comfort in electronics than parents and teachers.
“Back in the day a comfort for a child was a parent. … Nowadays you see they have their tablet. That’s their comfort,” Mobbs said. “Anytime something is going on, they just get handed a tablet. Not that that’s bad parenting, but it’s how things go these days. So when they get to school, they don’t have that tablet or that comfort.”
Viscuso agreed, saying that she sees screen dependency that starts at home and makes it more difficult for students to pay attention in the school environment.
“You’re talking about 3-year-olds that have tablets. That access to that has already happened before they enter the school system,” Viscuso said.
Erin Schuhmacher has spent 10 years as a counselor at all grade levels, most recently at Catlin Elementary. She said Snapchat, which allows users to send a photo or message that deletes after a few seconds, is the bane of her work.
“They use that to bully each other and then take it down and there’s no tracking it,” she said. “There’s all sort of stuff that goes down on that and then it blows up and you get the bad snowball days (of upset students).”
Mobbs said he thinks of high school in terms of “pre-Instagram versus post-Instagram.” He said students live on the internet now, and parents have little control over what children watch.
“Nowadays there are millions of different influencers kids could reach out to or follow, whether it’s TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook,” Mobbs said. “There’s so much, and it can be toxic or not. Being able to have control over that as a parent is impossible.”
Beyond providing counseling and crisis management, Viscuso said she and her fellow counselors often wear a social worker hat, connecting parents with resources and attending weekly behavior and academic meetings.
