Students' mental health will be affected by coronavirus. Are schools ready?

The 30 million children currently out of a traditional educational environment will hopefully return to classrooms in the fall. So the question lingers: Are schools ready for the mental health issues that may accompany them? There are two main challenges for practitioners: how they can address students' needs now, and how they can prepare for new mental health concerns come September. "When students return to school, daily life and classes will be far from normal," says George DuPaul, professor of school psychology. "Some students will return with new traumas, brought on by the mental and emotional stress of social isolation. There's also the fear of not knowing what will happen in the future, and the toll of economic stress on parents that inevitably got passed down to their children."