Does Baldwin County have a childhood mental health crisis?
If you follow the recent actions of the Baldwin County School Board (BCSB), you will think so. Spearheaded by Superintendent Eddie Tyler, Baldwin’s public schools have quietly, for the last three years, entered a dangerous and deeply troubling partnership with an outside psychiatric corporation called AltaPointe.
Without fanfare, the BCSB opened a psychiatric day school at EastPointe Mental Hospital this past January staffed by AltaPointe personnel. AltaPointe is not a school-based organization; its approach is medicalized, focused heavily on diagnosis, labeling, and often medication. This new day school segregates students from their normal school classes to receive mental health treatment at EastPointe.
Apparently Tyler and the BCSB believe there must be an imminent mental health crisis among Baldwin County children to warrant getting into bed with a mental health provider whose primary mission and expertise are rooted in clinical treatment, not education or child development.
Furthermore, although the BCSB is reluctant to discuss it, Baldwin County schools automatically enroll all students in a quasi-mental health program called ThriveWay. According to ThriveWay’s website, their methodology is “a multi-tiered system built off the school-based mental health model framework” – whatever that is. Also, the students’ health curriculum provides an additional mental health component as well as social, emotional learning (SEL).
Therefore, given all this mental health-related activity, coupled with frequent visits from their guidance counselors and sociologists, we must, indeed, have a mental health crisis in our schools. (According to recently acquired documents, Tyler and the BCSB also recently hired a full-time sociologist at Larry Newton Elementary School while others sociologists circulate among the schools.)
So, where is the evidence Baldwin County has a child mental health crisis?
There isn’t any. In fact, a recent study conducted by the BALDWIN COUNTY CHILDREN’S POLICY COUNCIL NEEDS ASSESSMENT 2020 indicates the population having the greatest mental health need in Baldwin County is not school-age children, but those in the 18-54-year-old demographic.
Parents should be extremely wary of any system that opens the door for mental health records to be created and possibly shared without their full knowledge or consent. What starts as a counseling session could quickly become a psychiatric file that follows a child for life – impacting future education, job opportunities, and even legal situations.
Even more concerning is the potential for over-diagnosis and over-medication. We already live in a world where children are increasingly labeled with disorders, sometimes for normal childhood behavior like restlessness, emotional ups and downs, or difficulty adjusting to school. When a system like AltaPointe embeds itself within schools, the line between everyday student struggles and clinical mental illness becomes dangerously blurred.
We send our kids to school to learn reading, writing, math, science, history – not to be patients in a system driven by mental health protocols, corporate goals, and pharmaceutical influence. Mental health support belongs in the hands of parents, trusted family doctors, and outside professionals that families choose, not as part of the daily routine inside public education.
AltaPointe is not the answer for Baldwin County Schools. If this partnership moves forward, it will fundamentally change the role of schools, infringe on parental rights, and risk turning classrooms into extensions of the mental health industry rather than safe places of learning and growth.
We need counselors and teachers who know our kids, not corporate psychiatrists, creating files and prescriptions behind closed doors.
Barry Nowlin is a retired English professor from the University of South Alabama. He presently works as an Uber driver for his two grandkids.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the policy or position of 1819 News. To comment, please send an email with your name and contact information to [email protected].
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