On Wednesday, January 19 my group and I had a wonderful interview with Ty Beauchamp. Ty Beauchamp is a school psychologist who works here at LREI. Ty went through four years of undergrad school, studying psychology and public service. Ty did another three years of studying school psychology, then four more years to get his Doctorate in education.
In our interview we talked about how COVID-19 has affected adolescents. Ty talked about how he feels people are socially and developmentally behind. also how elementary kids have suffered a lot due to the pandemic, and that middle school kids are also presenting in a way that is behind. Ty also shared about how anxiety has increased so much, people who were never anxious before are anxious now. Also the same thing is happening with depression but anxiety seems to be higher.
We continued talking about the pandemic and how it’s caused trauma to people.. Ty further talked about how trauma looks different for everybody, and how it’s like a spectrum. People losing family members due to the pandemic can be left with a lot of trauma connected to covid/ the pandemic. Moving into mental health care, people now more than ever are seeking out therapists. He talks about his feelings on how schools should be talking about this more. In our interview Ty says “people need to be more flexible and understand that, whatever you were supposed to look like as a middle schooler you might not necessarily be there and that’s okay.”
We then asked Ty “Do you think that parents try to ignore their child’s signs of mental health issues?”. Ty responds by saying he feels that parents don’t try to ignore the signs but that they don’t know what the signs are. Ty goes on to talk about some of the signs that they talked about in a parent meeting, some were changes in eating habits, changes in sleeping patterns, and changes in mood and behavior. Ty further states how much our sleep can affect our mental health, and how too little sleep will affect your focus in school also affects how much you can handle your emotions. We have learned how sleep is very important for your mental health. He goes on to state that it is just as important to take care of your mental health as it is to take care of your physical health.
My group and I had a great time meeting with Ty and our interview with him was very helpful. We got so much good information from him and are so grateful that he let us interview him.
