Students in Bandera County now have yearround access to free mental health care through a state program that offers telehealth counseling to Texas school districts.
Bandera County students have participated in nearly 90 counseling sessions since Bandera and Utopia ISDs joined the program in the fall, according to program data.
Both Bandera and Utopia ISD are participating in the mental health program known as TCHATT, or Texas Child Health Access Through Telemedicine. Medina ISD has been unresponsive to the program’s outreach.
The program has provided more than 174,000 counseling sessions to over 33,000 students across Texas, according to TCHATT Program Coordinator Rachel Jew. It is available to more than 2,300 students in Bandera County, according to TCHATT data.
“I think we’ve seen a lot of success in the program,” Jew said. “We’re just about four years old now and we are already in around 68% of all Texas schools.”
Students can receive one-on-one counseling, medication management and treatment for some of the most common issues, such as anxiety, depression and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
They access the program after being referred by a teacher. Once a student receives a referral, the school must receive parental consent to enroll the child in TCAHTT services.
The average referral leads to around five counseling sessions depending on the case. Sessions typically begin with both the parent and student, so the team can create a diagnostic picture throughout the process.
Following this, a support plan is created based on the family's circumstances and the availability of the parents and child.
TCHATT services serve students from age 4 to 18 and they adapt their services as needed, said Dr. Puja Patel, a pediatric psychologist who works with TCHATT.
“We do kind of think about how we structure our services based on age,” Patel said. “We’re also just thinking about where they are developmentally and making sure that we’re targeting out interventions to be focused on that.”
Perhaps the biggest selling point of TCHATT is there is no cost to the schools, or the students involved. Counseling sessions are completely free and medical insurance is not required.
“I think TCHATT is unique for a number of reasons,” Jew said. “We’re state funded, we’re free and we’re a statewide program so we are really available to public school districts and charters that would like us to be on their campus.”
While many schools and districts already had some form of mental health program in place, TCHATT is one of the more accessible and easier programs to use.
TCHATT counseling sessions take place during the school day and keep the children in school more than others.
TCHATT is funded by the state Legislature and overseen by the Texas Child Mental Health Consortium, which partners with various Texas medical schools and local and state mental health organizations to provide services.
“The consortium overall has a pretty heavy emphasis on workforce development,” Jew said. “We encourage our health-related institutions to hire trainees or students... so this is a career path for them and will help us across the state to ensure that we have mental health workforce available.”
Texas is ranked last in access to mental health care by the advocacy group Mental Health America, and rural areas suffer from the greatest deficit, according to Texas Community Health News data. That is one reason TCHATT focuses on rural school districts, said program manager Jew.
“We are often the only source of school-based mental health services,” Jew said.
More information about the TCHATT program and Bandera County schools' participation can be found at https://tcmhcc.utsystem. edu/tchatt/.
Colton Gibson is a journalism major at Texas State University and a contributor to Texas Community Health News, a collaboration between the School of Journalism and Mass Communication and the university's Translational Health Research Center He hopes to work as a sports writer and broadcaster.
