Experts say focus on mental, behavioral health paramount in combating school threats

Eli Majocha knows firsthand the strain a school threat can have on students’ mental health.

The 2023 Highlands High School graduate remembers how news of threats against his school or a nearby school made him feel.

“It’s unpredictable in nature,” he said. “When (it happens), you sit back and put everything in question. … It’s a scary perspective for a student. It makes students feel unsafe. Schools aren’t supposed to be like that.”

Highlands was targeted twice last week in a wave of unfounded threats at local districts that included Burrell and Fox Chapel Area. It was part of a spate of threats in recent weeks against schools across Western Pennsylvania and Ohio. Some were handwritten, such as a message left in a bathroom, but most came via social media platforms.

Now, as a Highlands School Board member, Majocha knows threats, even unfounded ones, are affecting the students.

While no one can eliminate the chance of a school threat, experts say schools have a powerful weapon to help prevent them: encouraging a climate of connectedness and belonging among students.

Schools’ efforts should be focused on those things, which, in turn, can prevent these issues from happening, said Courtney Leone, a professor and director of IUP’s school of psychology doctorate program.

Bolstering mental, social and emotional learning support decreases the likelihood of threats, she said.

School psychologists and counselors — which, Leone said, are vastly understaffed positions — are best equipped to mitigate mental health situations in schools.

Research shows that, as students’ feelings of belonging to and being connected with their school increase, so do healthy relationships among students, Leone said. Attendance and communication improve as well, she said, and students are less likely to engage in violence.

“That is the biggest mitigator,” she said. “Our efforts really need to focus on that.”

Majocha said it’s important for adults to advocate for mental health support, safety and security measures and to check in on students and how they feel.

“If we don’t prioritize that, it leads us down a dark road no one wants to go down,” he said.

The seeming regularity of threats against schools doesn’t lessen the trauma felt by students, experts say.

“Every student in K-12 education has grown up in this ‘lockdown generation,’ ” said Jack Rozel, a University of Pittsburgh psychiatry professor and medical director of UPMC’s Resolve Crisis Services. “We have normalized the response to these rare but horrible tragedies.”

The impact of threats and emergency situations on students is substantial and cumulative, Rozel said.

“When school threats happen, they unfortunately affect the entire community,” Leone said.

“Students at the nonthreatened school start to wonder: When is it going to be our school? There is such a pattern … it seems inevitable.”

The threats distract from learning, Leone said, and some students become unmotivated and isolated and withdraw from the school community. Attendance suffers, classes can be canceled or dismissed early, and there can be an increased police presence at the school, which leads to an inability of students and teachers to focus on education.

“When that happens, it changes how children view their school,” Leone said. “School, like their homes, is supposed to be a safe place.”

Drills and exercises also have a cost — they can be stressful and disruptive, Rozel said. Adults should ask kids how they feel after a drill.

What can curb anxiety is confidence among students and their families that the school district knows how to handle an emergency situation. If children know what to do in an emergency, and if adults know how to execute the plan, that can relieve some of the stress and fear, Rozel said.

Ultimately, it is school leadership’s job to build that trust, he said. That relationship can also become preventive. Students and families who believe the school can handle a situation are more likely to report to them immediately when they become aware of a threat, Rozel said.

He encouraged parents to understand what their child’s school does to prepare for emergencies and to reach out to the school or Safe2Say with any concerns.

Leone and Rozel stressed that parents should have honest, transparent and developmentally appropriate conversations with their children when a threat is made against their school.