315.991 Troubled Youth and Violence:
MSSNY supports legislation that children who take guns or other weapons to school should receive an evaluation by a psychiatrist and that those children who are determined by such evaluation to have a mental illness should receive appropriate treatment.
MSSNY supports teacher and parental educational initiatives to better enable them (a) to identify children with severe mental illness/emotional disturbance at risk for psychiatric illness, substance abuse, and potentially dangerous behaviors, and (b) to be aware of available treatments to assist these children and their families.
MSSNY reaffirms its support for parity of health insurance coverage for mental illness including children.
MSSNY will encourage the New York State Education Department to develop and implement a comprehensive unit in every grade, pre-school through grade 12, on anger management, peer mediation, and non-violent conflict resolution.
MSSNY will encourage the New York State Education Department to support adequate ratios of supervising adults to students, both during the school day and during off-school hours, and advocate for increased resources within the school, including before- and after-school (“wrap-around”) activities and increased personnel such as school nurse-teachers, counselors, and similar staff, to assist in educating children and their families about mental illness/emotional problems and to serve as resources to other school personnel.
MSSNY will support funding for not-for-profit community organizations that work with normal, troubled and/or addicted youth and their families to develop and promote safe, enriching, out of school alcohol and drug free activities for families, as well as parent education classes including, but not limited to, parenting skills, anger management, identifying early warning signs of substance use, gang involvement, deviant behavior, and community resources for management of the same.
MSSNY will support the establishment of guidelines by the New York State Education Department and funding for their implementation to help schools to deal effectively and safely with children whose violent or potentially-violent behavior constitutes a risk to self or others, and to find immediate screening, prevention, alternate programming and treatment in those instances where a bona fide mental health emergency has been demonstrated.
MSSNY will support funding to school districts, not-for-profit agencies, and communities to develop high quality, effective alternate programming, emergency evaluation and intervention, and short-, medium- and long-term treatment for children across the spectrum of mental illness.
MSSNY will continue to support efforts by the Legislature and the Governor to address media influence on youth violence. (HOD 1999-175, referred to &, adopted by Council 12/00; Reaffirmed HOD 2014 Reaffirmed HOD 2019 in lieu of res 153)
