Supporting Students’ Mental Health and Special Education Needs in DOD Schools

Being in a military family can mean moving a lot. Children in these families may change schools as many as 9 times before graduating high school. Navigating new school systems every couple years—particularly overseas—can be difficult for students and families. This is especially true for families who are trying to connect their children with much-needed services like mental health counseling or special education.

Today’s WatchBlog post takes a look at our two new reports on student access to mental health and special education services in Department of Defense-run schools, and what can be done to better support these children.

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What services do DOD schools provide to students who need mental health or special need supports?

There are currently 160 DOD-run schools in the U.S. and abroad. More than 66,000 children (pre-kindergarten through high school) attend these schools. Just like public schools, DOD is responsible for providing services to support these children’s mental well-being and meet their special education needs.

Student Enrollment and Number of Schools Across Department of Defense Education Activity, School Year 2023-2024

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Mental health support. Since the pandemic, mental health issues have been on the rise among young people. Social media use, bullying, and academic pressures have contributed to this increase. Military kids face additional stressors like frequent moves, parental deployments, and changing family dynamics.

DOD schools assessed 1 in 50 students for suicide risk in both school years 2022-23 and 2023-24. They found that 32% of the students assessed had a moderate risk for suicide and 6% were at high risk.

Student Mental Health Concerns Shared by Leaders in Select DOD Schools

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DOD has taken a number of steps in recent years to address the mental health needs of military-connected children—including those attending DOD schools. Three DOD-sponsored programs now embed mental health providers in DOD schools. One provides counseling to help children of active-duty service members adjust to new schools, handle stress of parental deployments and separations, and manage behavioral concerns. The other two programs embed providers in some DOD schools to treat conditions like anxiety, depression, substance misuse, post-traumatic stress, and ADHD.

Further, DOD’s schools have systems to help school-based staff identify struggling students and address their needs before they turn into crises.

Special education services. Individualized education programs (IEPs) outline how many minutes of specialized instruction students are legally required to receive from their schools—no matter what school they are enrolled in. IEPs also outline the related services students are required to receive—such as speech, occupational, or physical therapy—to support their instruction. But getting such supports can be difficult for students who move overseas where services are often limited.

DOD schools have recently taken steps to better identify and communicate what special education resources are available at locations abroad. For example, DOD now publishes a directory listing the related service levels available at each school overseas for each disability type. DOD uses the directory to make assignment recommendations based on whether a location has the appropriate levels of support for active-duty families with children who have special medical and educational needs.

Are DOD schools doing enough to support these kids?

In short, it’s a start but more work needs to be done. As stated above, DOD has taken steps to respond to rising student mental health concerns and ensure that students have access to legally required special education services. But there are some issues that need further attention.

Mental health support. The success of DOD schools' supports largely depends on the capacity of the school-based staff who are tasked with implementing them. However, school psychologists and counselors in nearly every school we visited described competing responsibilities that prevented them from attending to all but the most urgent student crises. And some said that responding to a student crisis could upend an entire workday and require extensive follow-up. These crises could include classroom outbursts or a student harming themselves. They also said that student crises can have a cascading effect on their ability to support other students who need their attention.

In addition, DOD’s mental health programs aren’t always available to students with the greatest needs. And they often don’t coordinate with each other. For example, one program places counselors in nearly every DOD school. But those counselors may not be sharing vital information on a student’s mental well-being with school-based staff. There’s also concern about high turnover among these counselors.

Closely evaluating all its student mental health programs, how they work together, and how they support students would help DOD better understand what is working and what isn't.

Special education services. In our new report, we found that many students are not getting the amount of service time they are entitled to.

Why? Because even though students' IEPs outline how many minutes of specialized instruction they must receive, DOD staffs its schools based on student headcounts and doesn’t consider required special education service minutes, such as instructional time. This may be contributing to not having enough staff available to deliver specialized instruction, and to significant delays in services for some.

In addition, staff we spoke with at DOD schools said there are several key obstacles they face in providing special education, including not having sufficient guidance on supporting special education students in the classroom. Some staff said that without clear guidance, service delivery is inconsistent across schools.

For an in-depth look at both mental health programs and special education services in DOD schools, be sure to check out our latest reports.

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