Bill Filed to Mandate Mental Health Education in Massachusetts Schools

If signed into law, all state public and private K-12 schools would be required to teach mental health on par with physical health curriculum.

BOSTON — A new bill pending in the Massachusetts House aims to make mental health education mandatory from kindergarten to 12th grade at all public and private schools in the state.

Bill H.616, titled “An Act Relative to the Promotion of Mental Health Education,” would amend current legislation regarding physical health education to “enhance student understanding, attitudes and behaviors that promote health, well-being and human dignity,” according to the bill’s text.

The bill would follow in the footsteps of mental health education laws in New York, Virginia, Florida and New Jersey. The New York law was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, while the Virginia and New Jersey laws were passed unanimously.

Lead bill sponsor Rep. Natalie Higgins, D-Leominster, said the value of mental health should be valued in schools on an equal footing with the existing physical health curriculum. “We already have a physical health education mandate,” she said in an interview via Zoom. “Why don’t we tie mental health education to that? If we’re ever going to truly move stigma around mental health, we need to make sure that we’re taking it just as seriously as we take our physical health.”

Second bill sponsor Rep. Tami Gouveia, D-Acton, said mental health education could serve as an additional support resource for young people throughout their education. “This bill would bring the conversation around mental health into the classroom, which really helps to reduce stigma and increase access and support to students,” she said in a phone interview.

Rep. Jack Lewis, D-Framingham, one of seven bill co-sponsors, wrote in an email that schools and teachers play a vital role in the physical and mental health of young people. “As the pandemic has reminded many,” he wrote, “support from trusted peers and mentors is vital to one’s overall health and well-being.”

Higgins said this bill is an iteration of several refiles originally inspired by the work of eight high school students in 2012 who wrote an extensive mental health curriculum and went on to form the non-profit LEAD (Let’s Empower, Advocate and Do).

LEAD president and co-founder Kyrah Altman said the organization was formed out of pure necessity. “The need [for mental health curriculum] was so great and the consequences of having it were so great,” Altman said in a phone interview. “It really was like, how can we not at this point? And why did we need to wait for eight high schoolers to do something about it?”

This newest iteration of the mental health education bill is backed by the Children’s Mental Health Campaign, a Massachusetts-based network of partner organizations including the Massachusetts Association of Mental Health and Boston Children’s Hospital.

CMHC Director Courtney Chelo said the organization has been working on this bill with Higgins since the last legislative session and will continue to provide support throughout the legislative process. “As the bill starts to move through the legislative session, we’ll be organizing panels to speak on behalf of the bill,” she said in a Zoom interview. “When it has a hearing, we’ll be providing written testimony as well.”

Chelo added that the CMHC will also help with community advocacy for the bill. “[We’ll be] raising awareness … putting education out into the community to make sure that folks are aware of the bill,” she said. “[We’ll also] engage stakeholders who work in the school behavioral health realm around it as well, so that they understand the bill and can help be advocates for universal mental health education.”

Both Higgins and Gouveia said the opposition they’ve heard against the bill mostly regards the bill’s lack of funding. “I think the concern that could pop up from the education committee … [is that they] may see this as another unfunded mandate,” Gouveia remarked.

However, Higgins argued that this version of the bill is intentionally broad for that reason. “We leave a lot of discretion up to the school committees and the local school administrations to show what it will look like,” Higgins said. “The original versions of the bill were really modeled after the LEAD curriculum and we said, you know, that’s a great model, but we know that there are a lot of really good free models that are popping up for our public schools as well.”

House Minority Leader Bradley Jones, R-North Reading, did not respond to three requests for comment regarding whether he or his party would cross party lines to support this bill.

Currently, the level of mental health resources at schools around Massachusetts varies. For example, Sammi Nie, 17, of Malden, said that although social workers exist at Malden High School, it’s difficult to obtain their services.

“I didn’t know we had social workers until October of last year,” Nie said in a phone interview. “I think they leave the school site around when students leave school. We wouldn’t even have had time to contact them … [unless] we missed one class.”

Nie said she is optimistic, however, about the prospect of mandatory mental health education at school. “People are going to be more willing to not see themselves as weak,” she said. “Talking about mental health, going really in-depth with it, will really make kids more sensible to the topic.”

Will Lambern, 18, of Northborough, said that the mental health education he received at Algonquin Regional High School was minimal. “I forgot what year it was, but one of the years they did a couple of days of that,” he said in a phone interview. “It wasn’t even a full period, really.”

But, even when presented with the idea of mandatory mental health education being added to the curriculum, Lambern is cautious about calling the bill a good idea. “I think it could be useful, but it depends on how they go about it,” he said. “If we go about it with what I’ve gone through so far, it hasn’t been very helpful, but I think if they teach [mental health] the right way to make students comfortable with talking about stuff like that, it could definitely be helpful.”

Bill H.616 was referred on March 29 to the House Committee on Education, where it will sit until a hearing is called or the time expires early next year. For now, Gouveia said she is spending this in-between time garnering more support. “We’re starting to reach out to our colleagues to explain to them what the bill does to try to secure their support,” she said.

With mental health becoming an increasingly major topic during the COVID-19 pandemic era, Higgins is optimistic that this bill can be passed swiftly. “I’m more hopeful than ever that some legislation around youth mental health can move quickly this session,” Higgins said, “but we’re going to be working really hard to make sure that [mental health education] stays front of mind.”