After wildfires devastated a large portion of her hometown of Lahaina in 2023, Mia Palacio felt as though she had lost a piece of herself.
Palacio found it difficult to cope with the loss of her home and village. She distanced herself from her loved ones and frequently felt resentful that she was relocating between high schools where she didn’t feel accepted, that her family didn’t have a permanent place to stay, and that more people weren’t able to leave on the evening of August 8.
As the months passed, the pain only became worse, and Palacio finally sought assistance as the first anniversary of the fires approached.
Since the fires, hundreds of kids, including Palacio, have experienced mental health issues, and not all of them have gotten the assistance they require. Following the fires that destroyed over 3,300 properties in Lahaina and claimed 102 lives, the Hawai i Department of Education estimates that over one-third of Maui pupils lost a family member, had a significant injury, or had a parent lose their job.
Many people in Lahaina are prepared to resume their regular lives after two years. Therapists, however, claim that pupils’ mental health issues are still getting worse.
Christopher Knightsbridge, one of several researchers at the University of Hawai I who have examined the wellbeing of Lahaina fire survivors, said that is typical following a tragedy, particularly at the two-year mark, when stress levels are still high and adrenaline goes off. After two years, children are dealing with the effects of ongoing uncertainty and change, even though they may feel numb right after a disaster, he added.
According to reports from Honolulu Civil Beat, The Associated Press, and numerous other news sites, it is a phenomena that occurs anywhere natural catastrophes have interrupted education. However, schools are not usually equipped with additional mental health resources a few years following the tragedy. For example, the island of Maui is still experiencing a shortage of experts. Despite an increase in demand, the number of psychiatrists serving young people has decreased from four to two in recent years.
Knightsbridge stated that the problem is still ongoing.
Two Years In
With the assistance of a school counselor and subsequently a neighborhood group that promotes kids’ mental health via outdoor pursuits and experiences, Palacio made strides. The Lahainaluna High School senior said she now feels more at ease confiding in people and managing her emotions. She also takes joy in helping younger students who have also faced difficulties since the fires.
However, many children still struggle with anxiety and despair two years later.
DayAccording to Jahiah Valdivia, a senior at Khei Charter School, she still gets stressed out when there are tiny brush fires or heavy winds on Maui. Valdivia resides in Upcountry Maui, which on the same day as the 2023 Lahaina fires saw wildfires that destroyed more than 1,000 acres of land. Although her family’s home was saved, it took months for them to return because their property needed to be professionally cleaned due to soot buildup.
Now that her family has talked about their catastrophe evacuation plan, she is less nervous. However, a summer fire close to a friend’s house in Central Maui rekindled her concerns about the security of her loved ones.
She added that for the first year following the fires, it was particularly challenging to focus in class or feel safe on windy days, and that the fear never truly went away.
Just over half of the youngsters in a 2024 UH study of Maui fire survivors reported having depressive symptoms, and 30% were probably dealing with an anxiety problem. PTSD affected over half of the children in the study, who ranged in age from 10 to 17.
Children in American communities affected by disasters can identify.
After what some referred to as the hero phase, in which the community came together and pledged to rebuild their town, there was a lengthy period of disillusionment in Paradise, California, where the 2018 Camp Fire claimed 85 lives. Due to housing shortages following their fires, families in Lahaina and Paradise were forced to relocate or live with friends in order to attend local schools or places of employment. According to research, students without a permanent residence generally face greater behavioral issues and academic difficulties.
Seven years later, many Paradise students still struggle with sadness and worry, which limits their ability to participate completely in class. The suspension rate was 7.4%, compared to 2.5% statewide, and 17% of kids were homeless a year after the Camp Fire. Last year, over 26% of students were chronically absent, and the suspension rate was still over three times higher than the state norm.
After losing her house, two pets, and her family’s business in the Paradise fire, Aryah Berkowitz struggled with persistent behavioral issues. Her family of seven, together with two surviving pitbull-labrador mixes, shared two beds and a bathroom with a friend in nearby Chico for almost a year after that. Berkowitz slept on the couch while he was in sixth grade.
Berkowitz, a once-high-achieving student who received two suspensions following the fire, stated, “I was having to help my family a lot and wasn’t able to handle it.” I vented my pent-up emotions on other individuals. On certain days, I would simply leave class.
Many youngsters were similarly distracted from school back on Maui. In the first year following the fires, a DOE poll of Maui students revealed that about half of them were experiencing difficulty concentrating in class or were distressed when reminded of the wildfires.
According to Jarrett Chapin, a teacher at Lahainaluna High, some students have struggled to remember the content or have ceased going to courses in person as they have been living in hotels and temporary accommodations. Due to the ongoing volatility in their families, several shifted to online education.
“They just kind of disappeared,” Chapin remarked.
A Shortage Of Specialists
Maui has long struggled with a shortage of medical personnel. Due to the state’s high cost of living and housing shortage, Maui already had a dearth of mental health specialists prior to the fires.
The problem was made worse by the burnout and increased financial barriers caused by the fires. Since then, the education department in Hawaii has attempted to increase the number of mental health professionals on Maui. Initially, this was done by bringing in providers from nearby islands and the mainland, and later, a $2 million federal grant was used to improve the academic and well-being of the kids.
However, it has been so hard to hire mental health staff that even the federal funding hasn’t had much of an impact. During the first nine months of the award, the state education department mostly used the funds to transport displaced kids from other parts of the island to Lahaina schools, which is about an hour away.
According to Kimberly Lessard, a Department of Education district expert, the state has now utilized the funds to hire five part-time mental health providers who interact with staff and students, including one specialist who works evenings with children who board on Lahainaluna’s campus.
However, as of this summer, two of the six mental health specialist jobs in Lahaina schools were still empty, and they had been for years, according to Lessard.
Valdivia has personally witnessed the effects of the provider shortage and continues to struggle with worry related to the Upcountry Maui fires. Because there aren’t enough providers who can meet with her in person, she is seeing a therapist from Oahu via telemedicine and is on a two- to three-month waiting list to visit a psychiatrist on Maui.
Going through such a drawn-out process to get help is frustrating, according to Valdivia, even though she is thankful that she has found a therapist who can facilitate their virtual meetings.
According to her, it takes months only to be evaluated (by a psychiatrist). That just seems insane to me.
Communities affected by disasters frequently face a scarcity of psychiatric personnel, frequently as a result of burnout and a lack of funding.
Anxiety, sadness, and post-traumatic stress disorder are prevalent among students in Puerto Rico, which has been hit by a string of natural disasters since Hurricane Maria in 2017.
However, the Commonwealth’s Education Department did not allocate funds to hire school psychologists until the pandemic, even though legislation was passed in 2000 to increase the number of school psychologist roles.
According to Nellie Zambrana, a clinical psychology professor at the University of Puerto Rico at R o Piedras, the school psychologists are unable to keep up. The university’s Psychological Research Institute found that people who are employed are overworked. According to the study, one psychologist was paired with over 100 pupils across three schools.
New Ways To Help
On a Tuesday afternoon in June, Loren Lapow wasn t deterred by the storm clouds gathering over D.T. Fleming Beach on Maui. The social worker helped teens carry an inflatable paddleboard to the water s edge, cheering them on as they swam.
Amid the fun, Lapow directed the teens to reflect on their fears and losses, asking them how they feel when they smell smoke in the air or think about Lahaina s Front Street, most of which was destroyed in the blaze.
According to Lapow, places are like friends to us. It is painful to lose places.
Lapow founded the Maui Hero Project, whichhis websitedescribes as adventure-based counseling services. The eight-week program Lapow started just over 25 years ago teaches kids basic disaster preparedness skills and immerses them in outdoor activities. It s also a form of mental health support. Healing from trauma comes in many forms, Lapow said, whether it s helping kids create new friendships or leading small group discussions about the mental toll of the fires.
We need to create a culture of healing and resiliency, Lapow said.
Lapow s approach has become a common strategy for nonprofits and therapists trying to reach kids who have balked at discussing their mental health since the fires. But those efforts aren t always reaching kids who need the most help.
There s a strong stigma around seeking mental health services, particularly in Filipino and Latino communities that make up a large portion of Lahaina s population, said Ruben Juarez, a professor at UH who led the research study on fire survivors. Families may see counseling as a sign of weakness, he said, and children may be reluctant to open up to therapists out of fear of being judged or scrutinized.
Yet in the study, Latino teens reported the highest rates of severe depressive and PTSD symptoms. Filipino teens reported some of the highest rates of anxiety. Similar cultural trends are seen in communities across the U.S.
Moving forward, Juarez said, kids mental health needs to be at the forefront of recovery plans.
The state is hoping struggling students will open up to their peers. A newOregon-based program called YouthLine will train Hawai i teens to respond to crisis calls, said Keli Acquaro, the administrator for the Department of Health s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Division. In addition to providing kids with real-time support from people their own age, Acquaro said, it will hopefully strengthen the pipeline of local students considering careers in mental health.
Keakealani Cashman, who graduated from Kamehameha Schools Maui in 2024, is hoping to be part of the state s solution to provide more mental health support to the next generation of children.
After losing her home to the fires, Cashman spent her senior year talking to Native Hawaiian practitioners and researching how cultural values, like connections to the land and her ancestors, could help her community heal from the trauma of the fires. The project improved her own mental health, said Cashman, who regularly met with her school s behavioral health specialist.
Now, Cashman is entering her second year at Brigham Young University Hawaii and hopes to work as a behavioral health specialist in Hawaiian immersion schools.
This horrible, horrible thing happened to me and my family, but I don t have to let it kill the rest of my life, Cashman said. I can really help my family, my community in school, and just make an impact in what I know how to do.
