(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — A new Illinois law that went into effect this year allows students to take up to five excused mental health days in a school year.
It’s designed to help children get the care they need, an official at one Chicago area school district says the measure has been little used, so far.
“Some of our families have been apprehensive to mark it as a reason for why they’re not in school,” said Faith Cole, Director of Student Services at Oak Park River Forest High School.
Cole said there’s still a stigma surrounding mental health. Students and parents are trying to get comfortable with the idea of taking days off when needed, she said.
“When we're sick, we have a fever, we have a headache — those things are very obvious,” she said. “It's when we have the other kind of invisible things that are happening that we realize something's off.”
She explains the new law not only helps students, but also school districts trying to navigate the types of resources offered.
“It is helpful for us, as a school, to know how many students are utilizing these mental health days,” Cole said. “Are we seeing them happen consecutively? Do we see them happen at certain points in the school year? Having a way of monitoring and tracking that, I think it's gonna be helpful for us to determine more collectively, are there things that we need to be mindful of?”
If a student at OPRF takes consecutive mental health days, a counselor or social worker will reach out to the family to make sure everything’s okay.
Cole said the goal is to connect them with some of the resources available to them if needed.
She tells WBBM Newsradio she’s hopeful the mental health days initiative will start to pick up in the next year or two.
“It's going to take some time, but I do feel like more and more, we're trying to put mental health really at the surface as well as in the fabric of what we do,” she said.
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