After a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May 2022, mental health professionals rushed to the small South Texas town to help.
Those at Texas Children’s Hospital started to make plans. They knew that once the immediate crisis passed, the extra helpers would go home, back to their regular jobs and their regular lives. But the community had experienced trauma, and things would not return to normal there.
The mental health professionals at Texas Children’s knew that their efforts would be best used to create a sustainable model of support for the community through the long recovery phase and into the future. To learn what would be helpful for the community, Kirti Saxena, MD, Chief of Psychiatry at Texas Children’s and Associate Professor of Pediatrics and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Baylor College of Medicine, and Karin Price, PhD, Chief of Psychology at Texas Children’s and Associate Professor of Pediatrics-Psychology at Baylor, consulted with Mayela Castañon, Chief Executive Officer of Community Health Development Inc. (CHDI) in Uvalde.
At Castañon’s invitation, Dr. Saxena, Dr. Price and some members of their teams participated in an annual community wellness fair in Uvalde in August.
“We wanted to reassure the families and the teachers and students going back to school because there was so much anxiety and angst,” Dr. Saxena said. “We wanted to prepare them for that and to create awareness among the parents — what they should look for, and when they should bring their child to see a mental health professional.”
They engaged with the families and conducted mental health screenings. They also gave away books about mindfulness, deep breathing and ways to calm yourself when you are feeling overwhelmed.
“It was a beautiful event,” Dr. Price said. “It was a great way for the community to start seeing Texas Children’s as a partner and a sustained presence.”
Afterward, Pediatric Psychology hired two full-time, bilingual clinicians dedicated to the Uvalde community. They spend three days every other week in Uvalde, seeing children and families. During their weeks in Houston, they offer telehealth counseling and engage in other activities to support the community.
Pediatric Psychiatry initially rotated one or two psychiatrists to Uvalde each week to work with children and adolescents, and then changed to a more sustainable model that provides a combination of in-person and virtual clinics. In addition, a mind-body intervention instructor from the psychiatry division meets with the CHDI staff. “He engages with them in practices around wellness,” Dr. Saxena said. “It’s about how to take care of yourself.”
Somber events in Uvalde and around Texas marked the first anniversary of the shootings. Texas Children’s psychologists and the mind-body interventionist were in Uvalde on and after that day to provide support for the community and the CHDI staff.
Looking to the future, Dr. Price and Dr. Saxena are working with Castañon to develop a long-term, sustainable plan for continued services.
“This is always going to be something that people live with,” Dr. Price said. “Someday, those kids are going to be adults, and they’re going to have to send their own children to school. It’s going to come up for them then. But I am a very strong believer in resilience. If we’re intervening with them now, we’re giving them skills to manage it and also making it more acceptable to seek help.”