Mental health summit at Wantagh's Mandalay Elementary School

The Wantagh School District is taking proactive steps for its younger students’ mental health, as well as the parents of its younger students. It hosted a “Mental Health Summit” on April 25. The summit was part of Wantagh’s partnership with Northwell Health, and Wantagh is now one of 28 schools to partner with Northwell on this mental health intiative.

With five panels and child psychiatrist Dr. Vera Feuer as its keynote speaker, the summit was a huge success. The five panels were:

Understanding Aggressive Behavior & Enhancing Inclusivity — led by Laura Campbell

Social Media Responsibility: You Are What You Share — led by Nancy Kaplan

Navigating the Transition to Middle School — Jennifer Sedler, licensed clinical social worker

Supporting Your Child Though the Elementary Years: A Home/School Partnership — led by Erin Joyce

Mindset Matters: Grit and the Journey to Student Success — led by Maria Maleganos

Feuer’s keynote addressed was entitled “Nurturing Family and Social Connections.”

According to guidance counselor Donna Schulman, this was actually a pre-pandemic activity — the school hosted one in 2020 before Covid truly began. But Feuer feels that prioritizing the mental health of students — particularly younger ones — has gotten even more important as we emerge from the pandemic.

“Kids these days are a lot more comfortable connecting online, and finding and communicating with their peers through devices, as opposed to face to face interaction,” Feuer told the Herald. “It has always been important, but maybe now more important than ever, to really focus on this to make sure that parents are — from a young age — having their kids understand the importance of these relationships in their lives, and how to have the skills necessary to have good relationships with both adults and peers.”

According to the guidance department, this kind of summit is important to get across to the parents of younger children because it could break stigmas  early on.

“We always say that the term mental health can be scary,” Donna Schulman said. “So we felt like it would be nice to give parents an opportunity to kind of see what topics are covered by mental health, and give them resources that they felt would meet their needs and the needs of their children the most.”