School and Mental Health

The Connecticut Children's Medical Center reports on psychiatric emergencies, and psych prof Peter Gray adds up the data by month in The Danger of Back to School | Psychology Today

Just as I predicted, July and August are the months with, by far, the fewest children’s psychiatric ER visits. In fact, the average number of visits for those two months combined (70 per month) is less than half of the average during the full school months (142 visits per month for the nine months excluding June, July and August). June, which has some school days (a number that varies depending on the number of snow days to be made up), is also low, but not as low as July and August. Interestingly, and not predicted by my hypothesis, September is also relatively low, equivalent to June. It seems plausible that September is a relatively relaxed warm-up month in school; serious tests, heavy assignments, and report cards are yet to come. It may take a few weeks back in school before the stress really kicks in.

I would note that I'm not sure how much of the stress of school is from the sources he describes, i.e. interactions with adults. He has elsewhere written that kids in same-age groups seem to have a lot more negative interactions than kids in multi-age groups. It may also take a few weeks back in school before cliques have a chance to build up to full-strength mutual nastiness.

Or then again, maybe not.