Four years after the pandemic hit, Lakeridge High School sophomore Neesa Lee still feels the impact. She lost a family member and that loss, combined with isolation, anxiety and loss of social connection, harmed her mental health.
“COVID had put me on lockdown,” said Lee. “I felt very alone because I don’t have any siblings and I didn’t have anything and I was kind of away from all my friends because of where I live and where I go to school.”
Prior to the pandemic, rates of depression, anxiety and other mental health challenges were on the rise among young people across the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The pandemic exacerbated conditions by stripping students of protective factors, like connectedness. And the transition back to in-person school left many students still looking for support.
School counselors can be an important resource for students, but Oregon schools fall short of recommended ratios. In the 2022-23 school year, Oregon had an average ratio of 345 students per counselor according to the American School Counselors Association, far more than the national recommendation of 250 to one.
Students faced increased mental health challenges during the pandemic, according to 2021 data from the CDC. From 2019 to 2021, national surveys found a 5% rise in feelings of sadness or hopelessness and a 3% increase in youth who seriously considered attempting suicide.
In Oregon, 38% of high school juniors “felt so sad or hopeless” that they stopped doing usual activities, a 2022 survey by the Oregon Health Authority found. More than 35% of juniors said they were “bothered by feeling nervous, anxious or on edge” several days a month.
School counselors are a key resource for students looking for support, especially in cases of mental health, Amy Henry, a counselor at Portland’s Benson Polytechnic High School who chairs the Oregon School Counselor Association, said.
“I see our role as school counselors very similar to if you went to your doctor,” said Henry. “You might not know what’s wrong, but you’re not feeling well. We’re the people that get you connected to resources.”
But some students say getting access to a school counselor has proven difficult.
Oregon’s ratio of 345 students per counselor was slightly better than the national average of 385 counselors per student in 2022-2023.
Lakeridge High, which serves about 1,200 students, currently has three school counselors after a fourth left earlier this school year. Counselor Lisa Sheehy says her caseload is more than 400 students.
“(Students) feel like they can’t really get in to see their counselors on time or their counselors aren’t in the office, so they can’t talk to them,” said Lakeridge senior, Kennedy Klein.
Klein runs the Pacer Positive Psychology Club, which aims to be a safe space for students to discuss mental health topics. She says that an anonymous survey early in the school year found that students wished that they had greater access to counselors.
Lee, the sophomore who lost a relative and felt isolated during the pandemic, says she feels supported at school, but her teachers are often the ones reaching out to provide support, not her counselor.
Accessibility for students hasn’t changed with increased ratios, says Sheehy, the Lakeridge counselor, but reaching out to students who don’t ask for help is difficult when caseloads are large.
“The (American School Counselors Association) recommends 250 to one, that obviously makes it way easier to get to know all of your students… When you have more than that you’re just not able to seek them out as much. They have to come to you,” she said.
If students don’t get face time with their counselors, it is difficult to build relationships that make them feel comfortable asking for help, said Tualatin High School junior, Campbell Brintnall.
“If you don’t really know your counselor that well then you’re not gonna feel comfortable to be able to open up to them if you need help, with honestly anything, but more specifically mental health,” Brintnall said.
Sheehy said the Lakeridge Counseling Department aims to spend more time with students to encourage them to feel comfortable reaching out. She also hopes to give more in-person class presentations to connect with students.
Counselors say the inability to reach out to students is driven, in part, by an increase in crisis level mental health cases.
“We are seeing mental health issues I’ve never seen in my career and they’re happening earlier and earlier,” said Henry. “A lot of times I tell people it’s almost like I work in an emergency room. We have to prioritize the crisis cases.”
This system can leave students experiencing moderate to mild issues under the radar and without the support they need to prevent issues from reaching a crisis level, Henry said.
Rural or impoverished areas face even greater challenges with accessibility, counselors say. Districts like Wallowa and Union County in rural northeastern Oregon have no licensed school counselors, said Teresa Dowdy, vice chair of the Oregon School Counselor Association.
The Oregon Department of Education is aware that some districts are unable to meet the national recommendation of 250 students per counselor, said Beth Wigham, the agency’s career college readiness and school counseling systems specialist. Student-counselor ratios are determined by “local school districts and funding availability,” Wigham said.
The Department of Education requires that schools provide a “comprehensive school counseling program,” but does not require a specific number of counselors. Districts can meet the requirement by employing people like social workers or licensed mental health providers from outside companies.
Tony Cannon, an elementary school counselor in the small Winston-Dillard School District south of Roseburg, said he had as many as 600 students on his caseload in the past three years. One of the hardest parts, he said, was his inability to provide resources he knows his students need. Since then, ratios have decreased to around 300 students per counselor, but Cannon says he continues to face challenges.
“I feel like I make a lot of promises throughout the week,” Cannon said. “This is one of the hard parts to kind of swallow when I go home every night is those kids that are depressed or probably underserved and there’s just not a lot I can change about that.”
In response to the student mental health crisis the Oregon School Counselors Association has asked the Oregon House and Senate education committees to form a task force, says counselor association member Gene Eakin. Members want the task force to analyze the state of school counseling programs and propose legislation in the 2025 session to pay for more counselors.
“I think it’s a great idea,” said Klein. “We need more resources.”
Youth Voices reporter Emilie Driscoll is a junior at Lakeridge High School. She is an editor and writer for her school newspaper, The Newspacer, and plans to study journalism in college.