Nearly 75% of parents miss work to address kids’ mental health or academic performance

Parent are taking a significant amount time off work to support their children’s mental health or academic needs, according to a new survey — a development that has the potential to leave lingering economic effects.

The survey, titled “Mental Health in the Classroom: The Impact on Kids, Teachers and Working Parents” and released by behavioral health software and solutions provider RethinkFirst, offers parental insights into social, emotional, and academic stressors that impacted their children in grades K-12 during the 2022-23 school year.

More than half of responding parents said they missed as many as four or more days of work during the school year to take their children to mental health-related appointments or stay home with them for related absences, or attend individualized education programs (IEPs) or parent-teacher conferences. All told, RethinkFirst data scientists estimate that the time parents take off work to provide support to their students could cost the U.S. economy as much as $65 billion in lost productivity annually.