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As the United States reels from yet another mass school shooting, experts warn that young children are suffering from its devastating impacts.

A total of three children, all age nine — as well as three adults — were killed at the Covenant School in Nashville in what President Joe Biden referred to as “sick” and “heartbreaking.”

Children can respond in a wide range of ways including being numb to the event, being more angry or irritable, suffering from high anxiety and being fearful of going back to school, according to mental health experts.

“As a pediatrician, and as a father, I think it makes common sense that when kids are exposed to this sort of thing, that it would have potentially long-term consequences for them,” Dr. Marc Gorelick, president and CEO of Children’s Minnesota hospital, told ABC News.

He continued, “And the research actually bears that out, that there are, in fact, significant behavioral and psychological impacts on children who either are victims of or witness to or even around events, such as this shooting in Nashville.”

Dr. Daniel Marullo, a clinical psychologist from Children’s of Alabama Hospital, told ABC News that many children develop resilience, or an ability to overcome serious hardships.

However, he says gun violence can impact a child’s mental health, especially if they are witness to such an event.

‘The impacts on them tend to fall into two categories,” Gorelick said. “Like older kids, they will often have symptoms of post-traumatic stress, that could be nightmares, sleep problems, avoiding certain locations, including avoiding school, because of the associated trauma.”

“Younger kids tend to have symptoms that reflect in things like withdrawal, depression, anxiety…in response to being a party to or witness to community violence, gun violence,” he added.

Read more at ABCNews.com.

As part of continuing efforts by the Biden-Harris Administration to increase access to mental health and substance use resources, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched FindSupport.gov in May, a new user-friendly website designed for the general public to help people identify available resources; explore unbiased information about various treatment options; and learn how to reach out to get the support they need for issues related to mental health, drugs, or alcohol.

FindSupport.gov helps people navigate through common questions when they are at the start of their journey to better behavioral health, such as how to ask for help, how to help others and how to search for a health care professional or support program that meets their needs. The website provides information on how to find treatment and support based on insurance status, including Medicaid, Medicare, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs health care, TRICARE, private insurance, and no insurance. And FindSupport.gov features resources on how to set up an appointment so that when people meet with a health care professional, they can feel confident that they are taking the right steps.

The concept for FindSupport.gov was developed by HHS’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in response to research showing that people were looking for an unbiased, trustworthy source of information on how to get support for mental health and substance use issues.

“Improving access to mental health and substance use services for the public remains central to SAMHSA’s mission and vision,” said SAMHSA Administrator Miriam E. Delphin-Rittmon, Ph.D. “By launching this new web resource, we are improving the customer experience of government programs and services by making often confusing but important information easy to understand and act on for all Americans. At SAMHSA, we are thrilled to host this resource that will help people find the support they need.”

Read more at SAMHSA.gov.

When Melanie James, Diné, a tribal crisis counselor at the Native and Strong Lifeline, answered her first phone call for the line back in November, it was from a mother struggling to get help for her child who was dealing with suicidal ideation. In the past, the mother had reached out to the 988 lifeline, but had been disappointed with the lack of knowledge about tribal and culturally specific resources.

Native and Strong Lifeline exists to provide those resources.

“She was so grateful that I was Native American because she said in a way, there is still stigma about mental health and the struggles about mental health amongst Native American communities,” Melanie James said. “I feel that Native and Strong Lifeline is one of the stepping stones that will help break that barrier.”

In response to the growing mental health crisis, Volunteers of America Western Washington, one of three of the state’s 988 crisis centers, launched the Native and Strong Lifeline in November 2022. The program is dedicated to serving Native communities across the state.

“There is a taboo of discussing suicide within Indigenous communities,” said Crystal James, Diné, a tribal crisis counselor shift lead at the lifeline. “It’s been great to be a catalyst to go from an area of taboo to getting to a journey of self-healing.”

Since launching, the Native and Strong Lifeline has received over 1,200 calls from across the state, according to Mia Klick, Tulalip and Nuu-Chah-Nulth descendant, the Native and Strong Lifeline coordinator. The lifeline has 14 tribal crisis counselors, but is in the process of expanding up to 18.

Working to support Native communities across Washington, the lifeline is run by Native crisis counselors, most of whom have their own lived experiences dealing with mental health struggles.

Read more at ICTNews.org.

While the Juneteenth holiday comes just once a year, mental health equity is a year-round cause. Learn more about this foundational holiday and how this historical day illuminates the importance of racial equity in mental health care.

Juneteenth is a holiday celebrated on June 19th to honor the emancipation of enslaved people in the United States. The holiday can be traced to Galveston, Texas, where approximately 2,000 troops arrived on June 19, 1865, and announced the freedom of more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in Texas. Before this day, some people remained enslaved despite the Emancipation Proclamation, which was passed in 1863 to free slaves in the U.S. In places still under Confederate control – which included Galveston, Texas – many people remained enslaved until the end of the Civil War in 1865.

In 1980, Texas officially recognized Juneteenth as “Emancipation Day,” a statewide holiday. Though many people have celebrated Juneteenth since 1866, many states did not recognize the holiday until President Joe Biden officially declared Juneteenth as a national holiday on June 17th, 2021.

The national recognition of Juneteenth follows an emotional and lengthy journey, heightened by the killing of George Floyd in 2020. Celebrators and supporters of the holiday have worked hard to raise awareness of this seminal summer day, and to remind U.S. citizens – as well as people outside the U.S. – why we honor this moment in history. Juneteenth also relates to another event which is Black History Month, which strives to celebrate the contributions and acknowledge the sacrifices made by African Americans.

With this history in mind, Juneteenth is also an opportunity to point out and condemn modern examples of racial inequity in all areas of life – including mental health care. These injustices persist in the U.S. and elsewhere, and as advocates for equity, we must remember that the end of slavery did not mark the end of all racial injustice.

In the context of mental health, the difference between equity and equality influences our ability to support people of all backgrounds, especially those who belong to racial and ethnic minority groups. For some of us, Juneteenth may be one of the few days of the year when we openly discuss this distinction – but for lasting change, these discussions must continue past June.

Read more at BetterHelp.com.

A new option for people with treatment-resistant depression and anxiety will be available on the Big Island starting Monday. It’s called transcranial magnetic stimulation, a noninvasive method developed in the 1980s and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2008.

Kipuka O Ke Ola, the Native Hawaiian rural health clinic in Waimea, recently acquired a TMS machine, making it the first and only one on the island to date.

Dr. Michael Farnsworth, a psychiatrist who works at the clinic three days a week, said he’ll start offering TMS therapy to certain patients this week.

“The magnetic field stimulates the neurons in the prefrontal cortex which are connected to the limbic system in the interior of your brain. That is the mood center,” he said.

Patients typically receive 18-minute sessions of TMS five days a week for six weeks. They stay awake the entire time and do not require any sedation. They can typically return to work or school or go about their daily activities with no down time.

The treatment will help an entirely new class of patients with depression who don’t respond to medications or talk therapy, Farnsworth said.

“It’s a fantastic treatment and I wish it was more readily accessible to people,” said Dr. Doreen Fukushima, a Honolulu-based psychiatrist who offers TMS at her clinic, Hoola Pono.

Read more at CivilBeat.org.

Access to mental health care in Latino and Hispanic communities is limited. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, only 35.1 percent of Hispanic and Latinx adults with a mental illness receive treatment. Language barriers and lack of insurance are some of the main factors that steer Spanish-speaking individuals away from receiving care, but Sanarai, a local healthtech platform, is addressing these issues.

Sanarai is a nonclinical mental health platform that partners with psychologists in Latin America to provide mental health services to Spanish-speaking adults. The platform allows users to receive care in their native language and patients aren’t required to have health insurance to participate.

Sanarai founder Luis Suarez grew up in Mexico City and moved to the U.S. to complete his MBA at Duke University. After graduating and working in consulting for a few years, the pandemic hit, and he began looking for mental health services in Spanish but struggled to find any.

“I was struggling to find someone that I could speak Spanish with and could fit [in] my schedule,” Suarez told Built In. “So that’s when I realized that there’s a big gap to cover the Latino community’s needs in terms of mental health.”

The U.S. has a shortage of mental health care providers that can provide culturally relevant care to Latinx patients. Only 5.5 percent of U.S. psychologists in 2016, the most recent data available, said they could provide care in Spanish. According to a 2021 report from the American Psychological Association, less than 8 percent of the U.S. psychology workforce identifies as Hispanic. Access to care has slightly increased over the years, but not enough to meet demand, according to Suarez.

Read more at BuiltinChicago.org.