Over the past eight years, the process has been used at least 750 times on students. Some are as young as 5 years old.
The state law that allows for these removals, known as petitions for emergency evaluation, is meant to be limited to people with severe mental illness, who are endangering their own lives or safety or someone else’s. It’s the first step toward getting someone involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital.
But advocates say schools across the country are sending children to the emergency room for psychiatric evaluations in response to behaviors prompted by bullying or frustration over assignments. The ER trips, they say, often follow months, and sometimes years, of their needs not being met.
There are a ton of kids with behavior challenges related to medical diagnoses. None of the things you listed will directly help those kids. They need medical treatment, the schools need more/better training, and they need to allocate more resources to help these kids in ways that are actually effective.