UB social work researchers addressing shortage of school-based mental health professionals in rural communities

A team from the School of Social Work has received a $3.59 million Department of Education grant to develop and implement a fellowship program for graduate students designed to increase the number of highly trained, school-based social workers in rural communities.

The School of Social Work, in partnership with Erie 1 BOCES, will create the Buffalo Mental Health Service Professional (MHSP) fellowship program. If selected for the fellowship, UB students pursuing a Master of Social Work (MSW) degree will receive intensive training and coursework in evidence-based practices meant to specifically address the unique mental health issues facing students and families in rural communities.

Rural schools face significant challenges meeting their students’ mental health needs because of staffing shortages, competing demands and the limitations of local mental health service systems, according to Katie C. Stalker, associate professor of social work and the grant’s principal investigator.

“Compared to children in metropolitan and urban areas, children in rural communities have higher rates of depression, suicidality and other mental health conditions,” says Stalker. “This program prepares our MSW students for the unique concerns found in these rural schools.”

Fellows in the Buffalo MHSP program will have field placements across three Western New York counties in the Alden, Akron, Niagara-Wheatfield and Medina school districts, all of which qualify as high-need local education agencies.

A second component of the program, called UB STARS (Small Towns and Rural Schools), will recruit MSW students to UB from the grant’s participating rural communities who are interested in social work positions at their local schools, thus helping to grow the workforce pipeline from within each community.

UB STARS fellows will receive full tuition and fees support, a field placement stipend, reimbursement for travel to and from placements, and other covered expenses.

UB STARS addresses what has been identified as the “rural knowledge gap,” according to Annahita Ball, associate professor of social work and the grant’s co-principal investigator. Alexander Rubin, clinical assistant professor, and Michael Lynch, clinical associate professor, both colleagues in the School of Social Work, will serve as co-investigators.

“Since most social workers are trained in urban areas and are from urban areas, they’re not adequately prepared to provide culturally appropriate services in rural schools,” Ball explains.

Over the course of the five-year grant period, 46 fellows will participate in the program, of which six will be UB STARS participants.

Adolescent mental health in the U.S., already a concern by 2019, was made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s a crisis of youth mental health, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and schools can help reverse the alarming trends.

Research has suggested that family structure, drugs, poverty and stigma are contributing factors to mental health issues of students in rural, low-income communities. And the concerns are even greater for racialized youth or youth who are members of the LGBTQ+ community.

“The higher rates of mental health issues we’re seeing in rural areas, compared with urban areas, is partly due to limited access to services,” Ball says. “There are fewer services, and those services are often far away.

“Western New York’s rural communities are also racially and ethnically diverse in ways that differ from urban areas and our students need to be able to better navigate these differences.”