When Layken Edenfield was little, her moods would switch quickly, her mother, Teresa Edenfield remembers.
“One minute she’d be happy and laughing, and the next minute she’d be crying her eyes out,” Edenfield said. “She was really hypersensitive about certain things around, or really terrified.”
A decade ago, 3-year-old Layken and her two younger, maternal siblings joined Teresa, her husband, and their four biological children in rural Darien, about 20 miles from Savannah. The childrens’ birth mother struggled with mental illness and substance use disorder, which Edenfield thinks puts Layken, now 13, and her siblings at a higher risk for developing the mental health condition she now has.
As mental health conditions rise among children, public schools like Layken’s are sometimes the first and best option for early intervention — especially in Georgia, where health care shortages are worsening and broadband access is not widespread.
Read more at GPB.org.
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