Trump's anti-DEI push ‘politicizes' Pierce County teen mental health guidance
The curricula changes, which Tacoma instructors say comes in contrast with evidence-based research, could undermine the program's success in Pierce County and nationally at a time when rates of anxiety, depression, suicide and violence are rising among youth.
The Teen Mental Health First Aid program (tMHFA) is currently taught in many Pierce County schools and community organizations. Over several sessions students in the program learn how to identify, understand and respond to common mental health challenges, including depression, anxiety, mood disorders, trauma, psychosis and substance use disorders. Youth also learn how to support others and how to get help from a safe, trusted adult. As of March, the Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department had trained more than 6,600 youth and 255 adults in the tMHFA program at 32 host sites since December 2022.
In May, the National Council for Mental Wellbeing updated its tMHFA curriculum to remove several videos, including a series featuring a transgender youth's mental health journey and recovery. In addition, the National Council for Mental Wellbeing omitted words like 'sexual assault' as an example of trauma and any mention of 'gun violence' and 'school shootings.'
The National Council for Mental Wellbeing told The News Tribune in a statement last week the organization 'remains steadfast in its commitment to advancing lifesaving legislation and strengthening the mental health and substance use safety net system across the country.'
'Public funding at both the federal and state levels is essential to that mission. Consequently, our organization and all those that implement Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) must adhere to all applicable federal and state guidelines, executive orders and mandates to ensure our curriculum remains compliant and our services widely accessible to help as many people as possible,' it said June 3. 'In response to recent changes in federal guidance and newly issued executive orders, we have updated our curricula. These updates do not alter the foundational elements of MHFA.'
Irene Tung, with the National Council for Mental Wellbeing, said via email June, 'While 'sexual assault,' 'gun violence' and 'mass shootings' were included in a long list of examples of trauma in our previous curriculum, we didn't teach about any of these topics in-depth, so we reframed the examples to be broader in the updated curriculum. For example, instead of 'gun violence,' we now say 'weapon.''
Tacoma-Pierce County Health Department communications director Kenny Via told The News Tribune in a June 4 email that the department remains 'committed to supporting the health and wellbeing of all Pierce County youth.'
'Our program in Pierce County is accredited through the National Council and our instructors are certified through the organization as well,' he said. 'As such, we have reviewed the changes and are working with our instructors and local partners to determine any areas of the curriculum we may need to supplement with additional resources.'
Aran Myracle is a drop-in coordinator at the Oasis Youth Center in Tacoma and has been a tMHFA certified instructor teaching the course to LGBTQ+ youth in Pierce County for two years. Myracle said Friday it's not unheard of to see changes to the curricula, but these changes went farther than that.
'I wanted to cry when the changes came down. This is such an important curriculum to deliver to youth, and it's really frustrating to see it politicized and have the way we're delivering this curriculum to youth change, not because we've decided through evidence-based research that it would be better if we did it this way,' he said. 'It's someone's political agenda saying, 'We don't want sexuality and gender to be talked about, so we're going to take out any mentions of those.' 'We don't want guns to be demonized at school, so we're not going to talk about gun violence in schools anymore.''
Although the original curricula didn't dive into gun violence or mass shootings in depth, Myracle said, the training is highly interactive and often generated organic discussions about these topics among youth.
'I genuinely feel that youth are traumatized by going through gun violence drills at school, and it's something that is impacting their lives,' he said. 'The ability to talk about that openly, I think, is important [when] talking about youth mental health and first aid.'
One of the most memorable parts of the training were several videos following 'Novak,' a real transgender teen who talked about his mental health journey, which included questioning his gender identity, withdrawing from his friends, being hospitalized for suicidality and recovering to a happy, healthy life, Myracle said. Those videos provided a positive message to teens, especially LGBTQ+ youth, to say that struggles 'could be part of your story, but it's not the end of your story,' he said.
'Removing Novak's videos removes a very important tool for reaching queer youth,' Myracle said. 'They don't see anyone like themselves in the curriculum anymore, and we know that it's very important for youth to see people who are like themselves represented when they're learning new skills and learning about new things.'
Youth of color, LGBTQ+ youth and youth experiencing homelessness are more likely to experience sexual violence, and sexual assaults against youth often take place in the child's school, neighborhood or home, according to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center.
One in four girls and one in six boys are sexually abused before the age of 18, according to NSVRC. A vast majority of child sexual abuse (around 80%) is perpetrated by someone known to the child, said Carlyn Sampson, the executive director of the Rebuilding Hope sexual assault center in Tacoma.
Sampson said she was 'really discouraged' and 'disappointed' to see the changes to the tMHFA guidance. Over the years Rebuilding Hope has sent providers to the trainings and found benefit in its guidance. Although none of its staff are required to complete the training or adhere to the National Council for Mental Wellbeing's guidance, Sampson said she would reconsider directing people to the guidance in the future.
While some might write off the tMHFA changes as semantics, Sampson argued the impacts are far-reaching. Words and language 'names and frames' people's experiences and realities, and the term 'sexual assault' exists as its own very specific form of violence, she said.
'To take away those words is to erase those survivors themselves, to erase those experiences and to erase an entire field that has decades of history of moving the needle forward on better defining, creating policy changes, changes in the law about how sexual violence crimes, how sex crimes against children, against adults, get defined,' she said.
Sampson said some human service organizations and nonprofits are finding themselves 'very much in conflicting spaces of not knowing what they are allowed to do' or how to fulfill their missions with new federal and state laws.
'I'm going to operate [on] an assumption that they are just as much caught in a place of conflict and confusion,' she said. 'If nothing else, maybe this story or any further discourse that is generated by this, helps them to pause and realize that there may also be an opportunity, if they have the resources, to stand in defiance of this national guidance.'
Rebuilding Hope Sexual Assault Center provides services to any individual whose life has been impacted by sexual assault. Rebuilding Hope's 24/7 Helpline is 1-855-757-7273.
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