Of the more than 110,000 asylum seekers who have recently landed in New York City, 20,000 are children now enrolled in public schools, facing challenges both familiar to any kid who has moved away and towering in their emotional complexity. More than 8,600 children in the city lost a parent to Covid. In response to these and other troubling statistics, the Adams administration released a mental health plan last March with a focus on children and teenagers and the goal of expanding clinical services in schools. The migrant crisis has been imagined largely in terms of the housing emergencies that have flowed from it. “We are seeing the highest level of mental health need we have ever seen, in our city, in our clinic, in our country,” Alan Shapiro told me recently.

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Persons: Eric Adams’s, Adams, ” Alan Shapiro Organizations: Department of Health, RAND Locations: New York City, ”, York