Her daughter’s anxiety was spiraling out of control and Jaquetta Johnson couldn’t find help.

Last fall, as the Delaware fourth grader’s acute anxiety kept her from concentrating in class, a doctor gave Johnson a list of children’s therapists. But all were fully booked, some with wait times of six months to a year.

Then Johnson heard about a new health clinic inside a school in her daughter’s school district south of Wilmington. Johnson enrolled her daughter, and soon she was receiving counseling.

“When nobody else would see her,” Johnson said, “she was able to get help at school.”

Nationwide, nearly 2,600 health centers operated out of schools in 2017, the most recent year with available data — more than twice the number that existed two decades earlier. Some 6.3 million students in more than 10,000 schools had access to the centers, according to the School-Based Health Alliance.

School-based health centers offer free services — from flu shots and physicals to contraceptive care and talk therapy — that students can access without need of insurance or a trip to the doctor’s office. The vast majority offer behavioral health care, which is increasingly in demand as students’ mental health challenges mount.

“The mental health needs: It’s across districts, it’s across states, it’s across the country,” said Cheri Woodall, health and wellness supervisor in the Colonial School District, where Johnson’s daughter attends school.

Now, as many schools buckle under the weight of those needs and some community providers cannot meet demand, on-campus health clinics are attracting new attention.

Last month, Minnesota became the 21st state to fund school clinics, according to the alliance. Many governors, including those in Ohio and Georgia, used COVID recovery money to launch school health centers, and some federal lawmakers want to boost their funding.

Read the full article about school-based health clinics by Patrick Wall at Chalkbeat.