New York Public Schools Require Mindful Breathing Exercises to Address Youth Mental Health Crisis

NEW YORK — Take a deep breath. Relax the body. And exhale slowly through the mouth.

Then repeat it six times.

In New York, everyone from preschoolers to high school seniors will have to do similar exercises during classes next fall, after Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday that all public schools would have to offer two to five minutes of mindful breathing exercises every day.

Adams, who often speaks of the benefits of healthy eating, mindfulness and fitness in his life, presented the plan as a simple and “easy” way to develop students’ emotional skills and address a youth mental health crisis exacerbated by the pandemic, citing research showing that breathing exercises can reduce stress and increase alertness.

“Thousands of years ago, other cultures learned how to breathe,” Adams said in her announcement at PS 5 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. But in today’s world “we have never been taught,” she said.

“We think that the air just goes in and out of our nose and we move. No, there is a science to breathing,” the mayor added, before closing his eyes and following a student-led breathing exercise.

Tuesday’s announcement came as some advocates and families have advocated for a stronger local approach to youth mental health and criticized a proposal to remove funding from the city budget for a program that connects high-need schools with mental health clinics and provides mobile response teams for students in crisis.

But Adams said the effort was just a low-cost, common-sense way to improve student well-being and help kids learn the valuable but neglected “beginning of something that is one of the oldest things in humanity.”

New York’s breathing exercise requirement reflects the renewed attention that school districts across the country have paid to student well-being in recent years as they grapple with rising rates of anxiety, depression, self-harm and other mental health problems in children and adolescents.

For example, in Los Angeles County, students through twelfth grade have virtual mental health services under a new plan that was implemented earlier this year. And in Illinois, a new law just went into effect that allows students to be excused from school for up to five days for mental health issues.

In the nation’s largest education system, Adams and School Chancellor David C. Banks have said all high school students could soon get virtual mental health support for the first time through a new program, though full details have yet to be announced.

“I get asked a lot: ‘What are you doing? Children are going through a lot. What are your mental health programs?’” Banks said. “There is nothing more important that we can teach our children than mindfulness and conscious breathing.”

Still, some elected officials, teachers, and families are calling for a more comprehensive approach to addressing the needs of mental health and disadvantaged students in particular. New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli found that during the 2020-2021 school year, the city’s schools were not sufficiently prepared to address the youth mental health crisis. Since then, education officials have made several changes, including giving each school access to a social worker or mental health clinic.

Dawn Yuster, director of the School Justice Project at Advocates for Children, a nonprofit education advocacy organization, said she remained very concerned about the administration’s proposal to cut $5 million from a mental health initiative in some 50 high-need schools, where rates of police intervention for students in emotional crisis are very high.

The program offers students access to faster mental health care and links schools to clinics and provides mobile crisis teams that can help with immediate problems. A spokesman for the city did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the proposed cut.

Yuster acknowledges that mindfulness and breathing exercises can have a “real impact” on students. But she added that “it’s certainly not a substitute for other really critical programs and services that are at risk of disappearing.”

A classroom in the Bronx, on Jan. 27, 2023. (Thalia Juarez/The New York Times)

2023-07-24 17:53:58


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