What is a Recovery High School? Why do we need them?
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According to SAMHSA, 842,000 adolescents aged 12 – 17 in 2021 had a co-occurring substance use disorder (SUD) and a major depressive episode (MDE). Only 6.5% (31,000) of these teens received both SUD and mental health treatment in a facility especially designed to provide substance use and mental health services. About half of these teens (52.4% or 440,000) received only mental health services.1 This means that close to half of adolescents in need of treatment for mental health and substance use disorders received no treatment at all.
Recovery high schools (RHSs) were created to address the needs of teens with substance misuse and co-occurring mental health disorders. To be clear – RHSs are not set up to provide treatment. In conversations with our students, they often don’t even want treatment. But they certainly want their lives to be more manageable. RHSs are well-positioned to meet students where they are to provide a strong academic program and recovery support services within the school day that strengthen and honor recovery.
Many of our students come to us unsure about their recovery and whether or not they want to stay engaged. However, an overwhelming number of our students, once they meet other youth in recovery, decide that they do want to give recovery a chance and successfully stay engaged with their recovery. In this setting, they find success academically and a newfound joy for the world in which they live.
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The Association of Recovery Schools (ARS) was formed in 2002 to advocate for policies and funding for adolescent substance use disorder. There are now close to 50 RHSs in the United States. ARS is an accrediting organization that reviews the academic and recovery support services of its member schools and provides technical assistance to individuals and organizations seeking to start a RHS in their communities. Most recently, ARS has been working with the University of Oregon to design and implement the Social-Emotional Assets and Resilience Scales (SEARS) to measure resiliency and recovery capital in our students.
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In recent years, RHSs have worked to address the social inequities resulting from the way co-occurring substance use and mental health disorders are treated in our society based upon the race and ethnicity of the affected person. Historically, youth of color with substance use and co-occurring mental health disorders have been removed from their communities and placed in juvenile facilities. Youth of color are more likely to be placed in juvenile detention, even though white youth have a higher rate of substance use disorder.2 Many of our schools now work directly with juvenile justice programs in their communities to provide an alternative path for students who in the past would have been incarcerated so that these kids can continue to learn, work, and recover within their neighborhoods.
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ARS is very excited to be partnering with Peer Recovery Centers of Excellence to offer a series of webinars and technical assistance to start-up and existing schools. Webinar topics range from the delivery of recovery support services within a high school to data collection to issues of justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion within the academic and recovery landscapes. For more information about starting a recovery high school in your area, please reach out to ARS or PRCoE.
1 Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. (2022). Key substance use and mental health indicators in the United States: Results from the 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (HHS Publication No. PEP22-07-01-005, NSDUH Series H-57). Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. https://www.samhsa.gov/data/report/2021-nsduh-annual-national-report
2 Rovner, J. (2021). Racial disparities in youth incarceration. The Sentencing Project. Retrieved December 2, 2022, from https://www.sentencingproject.org/app/uploads/2022/08/Racial-Disparities-in-Youth-Incarceration-Persist.pdf
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Funding for this initiative was made possible by grant no. 1H79TI083022 from SAMHSA. The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.
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