Federally Funded Mental Health Services Matter More Than Our Officials Think

Photo Credit: Ben Arp

In April of this year, the Trump administration cancelled millions of dollars of federal aid previously allocated toward funding social impact programs assisting K-12 and postsecondary mental health aid. The 2022 Uvalde school shooting of 19 students and 2 teachers, the third deadliest mass shooting in American education history and the single deadliest in Texas, prompted a significant $1 billion Congressional appropriation as part of the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) to aid the present and growing concerns surrounding public mental health. The BSCA was intended to facilitate social workers, school psychologists, and counselor services, yet this underprivileged-assistive action strongly conflicts with the current administration’s policy priorities targeting the previous administration’s diversity, equity, and inclusivity efforts. In a preliminary ruling responding to the elimination and defunding of invaluable Education Department grants and programs, U.S. District Court judge Kymberly K. Evanson found the Trump administration in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act, requiring millions of dollars in retracted funding in targeted states to be restored. It is concerning, and unfortunately not unexpected, for the Trump administration to take radical and haphazard action in ensuring its policy values. It is all the more concerning given the dramatic and unknowable impact such policy swings can have on the outcomes of education, especially when mental health services intended to act as support for struggling elements of the system can be so arbitrarily stripped away.

Public School Overview

Public school education as a whole finds itself under attack by the Trump administration, facilitated through an extreme weakening and reduction in the impact of the Department of Education. The Century Foundation finds “outright abolishing the department would require an act of Congress,” but as evidenced by his “executively entitled” noncompliance with direct court orders and a rampant quickness to fire government workers - such as Former Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer - who reject the success of his current presidency, Trump has little regard for respecting the due procedure and process of law. Within education alone, he has set his sights on slashing the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which beneficially tailors education to the physically and mentally disabled, and Title I, which the Century Foundation writes provides “extra supports—more teachers, money for supplies, access to better curriculum, behavioral and mental health programs, and more—to help low-income children succeed and help make up for the gaps between rich and poor school districts.” 

Nothing is more clear on the dismal and depreciating state of public education than the perspective of our educators. Pew Research Center reports that “the vast majority of teachers (82%) say that the overall state of public K-12 education has gotten worse in the last five years. Only 5% say it’s gotten better.” Teachers are losing faith in a system which seems beguiled by budget cutbacks and money-saving measures above developing young minds, a system eating itself from the inside out which pretends it is more alive and well than ever. Echoing the words of the President of Education Minnesota Denise Specht, we need more staff with more support for our schools, not less of both. 

The Mental Health Aspect

The Center for American Progress displays how over “$4 billion for public education at the start of the 2025-26 school year” is being actively withheld, a strategy the administration seems to echo in its larger approach to government function; defund the disliked so as to force opponents into submission. It’s effectively one large game of Russian roulette, where even when the bullet shoots into an ever plummeting public approval, the game somehow keeps going on. If gutting education, clean energy advancement, healthcare, and SNAP benefits for millions of desperately reliant Americans isn’t enough to sink the ship, it should be frightening to think what might. It should further alarm us, pulling from the Learning Policy Institute’s brief summary, to hear that “in 2023, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that 40% of high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, roughly one third experienced poor mental health, and 20% reported that they had seriously considered suicide.” Mental health is an all-encompassing issue, one that is only growing worse.

It is especially disheartening to hear that, despite the fervent flag of “DEI panic” some wave frantically on social media and national news alike, historically unequal groups like women, the LGBTQ+ community, and racial minority groups are still underserved and underrepresented in our current student mental health services. It is not the time nor place to cut funding to valuable and necessary measures which contribute to the areas currently most essentially requiring them. When we delude ourselves into believing adequate caseload figures to be a student-counselor ratio of “178:1 to 326:1 for high school counselors and 581:1 to 702:1 for elementary/middle school counselors,” it becomes abjectly clear we have lost sight of our aim to better an ever-worsening mental crisis. It is a pathetic fantasy to believe effective, quality mental health care can be done with these outrageous numbers, expecting one counselor to scrape together the time and capacity to deeply connect with 500 odd children, much less help them in any meaningful way. We cannot claim success from merely sustaining a far-below baseline level of counseling aid to a problem only growing in scope, and on both a national and global stage we appear to have truly failed to deliver. Among other developed nations the United States projects the greatest mental health needs, the least admittance to mental health problems, and the highest suicide rates. Schools bear a distinct and disturbing contribution to this fact, as in data from 2021 (which has only increased with time) “suicide was the third leading cause of death among U.S. high school youth aged 14–18 years.” 

Law for Order

We have established the tremendous politically-driven and systemic challenges facing public education and the crumbling condition of aid programs - particularly from a specific educational viewpoint - intended to address the overwhelming societal issue of mental health. If it would feel the situation has become impossibly bleak, that government action has been slashed to an ineffective and unconstitutional degree, there remains a ray of hope in the form of Judge Kymberly K. Evanson. Preliminarily ruling on a lawsuit jointly filed by several states - including California and New York - against the Department of Education, Judge Evanson ordered the restoration of millions of dollars of pulled funding brought back to some of the grantee counties currently involved in the case. The crux of the issue revolved around how best to consider the impact of mental health programs, as harmful tax dollar wastage or as defending state officials put it, “an incredible success” which EducationWeek writes “showed reduction in students’ suicide risk, decreases in absenteeism and behavioral problems, and increases in student-staff engagement.”

Pulling from the ruling of Judge Evanson herself, “The hardships faced by Plaintiff States, whose schools depend so heavily (if not entirely) on federal funding to achieve Congress’s goals for the MHSP and SBMH programs, in the absence of an injunction far outweigh the hardship to the Government in pausing the recompeting of funds to allow lawful continuation decisions to be rendered. Likewise, the public is served by requiring the Government to provide reasoned explanations and to consider reliance interests when changing a position via agency actions, and by setting aside arbitrary and capricious agency decisions that fail to do so.” In an explicit refutation of critical commentary from department spokesperson Madi Biedermann, who cited race-based Biden administration priorities as a reason for the funding massacre, Judge Evanson replied “There is no evidence the Department considered any relevant data pertaining to the Grants at issue,” AP news additionally reporting that “the department did not tell grantees why their work didn’t meet the “best interest” criteria.”

Clearly choosing to ignore the precedent and practice that former programs of predecessors be respected, the current administration has embarked on a violent and erratic eradication of everyday institutions which run counter to its messaging. As shameful as it is that a representative, democratically elected government would turn against its people in such a cowardly and underhanded way, there is still hope. The courts, specifically at federal and state levels, have proven over the past few months to be inspiringly staunch and unyielding defenders of the rule of law. Former dean of George Washington University Law School Paul Schiff Berman writes how just “last week we saw at least four such instances” of district court judges taking a perilous personal stand against the injustices being committed within the United States legal system, citing Judges Wolf, Ellis and Immergut for their rebuke against legality, immigration, and national guard deployment respectively and praising two others for their protection of mandating SNAP benefits fulfillment. Judge Evanson is a model for our constitutional balances applying to the widest extent of functions critical for our everyday prosperity, projecting a sentiment for order and compassion which has been strongly lacking in recent governmental affairs. It is equally as beneficial for the dictatorship, in addition to blatantly seizing power, to have the good deeds opposing them go unnoticed and uncelebrated by the people. If we value the honor and essence of fair law in our country, and a commitment to the rightful enfranchisement of those in need of mental health programs and more, we must recognize the people fighting not just in the light, but the shadows. By expanding our views outside of our lives, we come to see the impact of policy where it was not visible before. 

Puzzling Appointments

Education is a mystery and a disaster to those not within the system, but our approach should not be to give up on it or the children struggling to stay afloat. It is not an excuse but a failure to misunderstand student challenges as part of a weak and politicized agenda, and deny mental health services which have only become all the more necessary. Our two highest elected officials lack even the slightest wherewithal to address this issue, with Trump attempting to dismantle public education out of blind despotic inconstancy (in a long line of flip-flopping on tariffs, SNAP benefits, and 50 year mortgage propositions) and Vance continuing to consciously sidestep any form of responsible action. Appointing unproven and illegitimate figureheads like Linda E. McMahon as Secretary of Education, Kristi Noem as secretary-in-waiting for Homeland Security and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as US Health Secretary, to name but a few, is not how the United States prospers. It is how careless and uninformed appointees bend the knee to assure their position at the cost of selling crucial present and future student success. It is how a blatant system of patronage, favoritism, and unqualified politicized appointment destroys both the functioning of our schools and government and more broadly our meritocratic and respectable institutional reputation on a national and international level. As a society based in free market values, we believe in a free and fair environment for those who can leverage it to succeed. That view breaks down when worthiness stops being rewarded, when merit is traded for connections and when our public education is crippled to keep certain classes undeservedly on top. 

Everyone deserves a chance to prove themselves, and an inseparable element of that is to have access to mental health services which alleviate the intensity of their challenges and secure their forward progress. The American people similarly deserve consistency, in policy and in law, as a fundamental right made true by respect for our institutions and time-honored government practices. A respect that transcends political divide or aspiration, and which adheres to the strictest and most noble traditions of our constitution. Judge Evanson is one of many notable figures who have recognized the importance of preserving our past and strengthening, not weakening, our country’s future. Law is not meant to bend to Trump’s will, and neither for policies already in place for mental health, education and all else to be torn away without replacement. For public education to be all it can be, students moving into the workforce and the world should be well educationally and mentally. For mental health services to be recognized as a contribution and not a burden to our economy and education and for our law to be followed and not ignored, both must be preserved. 

Final Notes

Government unpredictability should concern all of us, particularly out of recognition for the students more in need of mental health services than ever in these uniquely modern times of uncertainty and unrest. We cannot let political squabble lead to the destruction of lives by very real and damaging decisions, nor let polarization contribute to some supporting, on incomplete knowledge, these America-second policies. Judge Evanson, state assemblies, local courts and brave individual lawyers, those fighting need more recognition for benefiting a cause vital to our nation’s continued bright future. We must push back to preserve all that can be kept and take action locally and nationally when voices of truth and foresight are needed. Our students should have the chance to live prosperously and be proud of their country, and not hopelessly live in hate of it.