Please be advised that the Full Service Community School Health Center (including Behavioral Health Counseling) will be closed in accordance with Paterson Public Schools closing due to the COVID-19 Virus and will re-open at the time school re-commences. In the meantime, we are working from home and if any of our families need support our team can be reached by calling your Full Service Community School Health Center voice mailbox and the appropriate personnel will return the call. This includes Treatment Coordinators and Behavioral Health Counselors. Please click on “Contact Us” to access contact information.
Please follow our Full Service Community School Health Center Pediatrician at: docrazzak on facebook. Please see his contact information on this site ‘contact us’ for office and telephone contact. Please note, Dr. Razzak is scheduling TELEHEALTH for patients. Follow his protocols to determine need.
We realize that the uncertainty and stressors related to this situation may cause increased levels of fear and anxiety. If you find that you, or anyone in your family is experiencing a mental health emergency please call 911 or go to your nearest emergency room. In addition, please consider the following resources local to the Paterson Community for your long term mental health:
PerformCare New Jersey: 1-877-652-7624
Open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with an office in Paterson, PerformCare develops and manages behavioral health solutions for children, adolescents and families.
Circle of Care for Families and Children of Passaic County: 973-942-4588
Woodland Park, Circle of Care provides services for children with emotional and behavioral challenges using a wraparound model so that the child and family may live and thrive in the community.
Family Intervention Services: 973-523-0089
Located at 655 Broadway in Paterson, FIS provides crisis intervention, therapeutic counseling, case management, education and support for families.
St. Joseph’s Health Screening Service: 973-754-2230
This 24-hour hotline number offers emergency psychiatric evaluation screenings and psychiatric referrals.
TIPS FOR MANAGING OUR WORRY AND RESPONDING TO OUR CHILDREN
Our kids already live with heightened worry — pressure to achieve, social comparison, safety in the community, lockdown drills and active shooter drills. Let’s not add to their burden. As adults, we need to do what we can to make sure we do not add to their levels of anxiety.
There is risk in living. However, when we panic and let fear guide us and try to eliminate our risks, we end up eliminating what gives life meaning — what it means to live with joy.
So, how do we reel it back and help ourselves — and our children — not get drawn into the panic vortex? We focus on that which is in our control.
Prepare.
Prepare like any other disruptive event — like a snowstorm — but not the apocalypse.
Wash hands with soap and water.
That said, pay attention to over-washing that results in raw and chapped skin. If this is becoming an obsession seek help from a mental health professional.
Boost your immune system.
Get plenty of sleep, eat vegetables and fruit — don’t stress eat sugars — and exercise to reduce stress (since stress weakens your immune system).
Meditate.
Have you been meaning to try meditation? Now is a good time to start. There are lots of apps out there (such as Calm, Insight Timer and Stop Breathe Think) to help you find peace and bring your – and your children’s — cortisol (stress hormone) levels down.
Breathe.
If you or your child starts to feel overwhelmed, dizzy and heading in crisis mode, focus on the breath. Try breathing in for four, hold for seven and exhale for eight. After a few rounds, you will feel a difference in body and mind.
Avoid “predicting the future”
Stay in the reality of now. Avoid the slippery slope of what-ifs and what might happen.
The news has a massive impact on our distress. Try these ideas to reduce it.
Limit media.
Again, for ourselves and for our children. Turn off the TV, especially when the kids are home.
Turn off all news notifications and set screen time news limits.
Many children who have access to digital devices receive news alerts. Turn them off. For those who go looking for the news, you can select how many minutes or hours the news app can be accessed in a day.
Educate.
As adults, we know the media profits from grabbing and keeping our attention, but many kids aren’t aware of this. The constant barrage of headlines can be overwhelming and can cause anxiety and even panic. Provide your children with age-appropriate education toward the current concern. For example show them the video from the CDC posted on our website. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPsY-jLqaXM
Don’t go down the “rabbit hole” online.
We also get caught up into thinking that if we keep reading, we just might find the one thing that can make a difference. Unfortunately, constant news, stories and information is not helpful — it just puts us in high alarm and overwhelms us.
Vary your media sources.
Teach and remind older kids about quality variance in media outlets and that our main sources of information should be the CDC and WHO.
As the saying goes “Little pitchers have big ears”.
As parents, we need to be aware of what we discuss with other adults in front of our kids.
Despite our deepest desires (and our very best efforts), we cannot control everything. This is a high-profile illustration of the inherent risk of living that we have to get comfortable with. Yes, we are smart and mitigate risk when we can, but we keep our heads. What we can control is our ability to accept and more importantly to strengthen our ability to sit with that discomfort, and help our children learn this too.
As adults, we are the front line on reducing anxiety. Many of our children are too young to remember all the other panics that we have faced — Ebola, SARS, AIDS, bird flu, swine flu, Zika virus and even terrorism. It may give us comfort to remind ourselves and teach our children that this is not the first time something new and scary has hit the world and the vast majority of us have been OK.
We, as adults and parents, need to start with ourselves. Kids are smart. If we tell them all is OK but we are freaking out, they will see through that and it will alarm them even more.
We have no idea what the next few weeks will be like. Let’s not exhaust ourselves already.
All of us at the FSCS Health Centers want you to stay safe and healthy!
