This study tested an integrated package for high-quality school mental health (SMH) services involving quality assessment and improvement, family engagement and empowerment, modular evidence-based practice, and implementation support. Within a two-year randomized controlled trial, 35 clinicians, who provided services to 529 students and their…

Objective: Although schools are identified as critical for detecting youth mental disorders, little is known about whether the number of mental health providers and types of resources that they offer influence student mental health service use. Such information could inform the development and allocation of appropriate school-based resources to…

Professional family peer advocates are increasingly employed by public mental health systems to deliver family-to-family support that reduces barriers families face in accessing children's mental health care. These services, however, are neither uniformly available nor standardized. This pilot study describes the process, content and context of…

Improving outcomes for children and adolescents with mental health needs demands a broad meta-systemic orientation to overcome persistent problems in current service systems. Improving outcomes necessitates inclusion of current and emerging evidence about effective practices for the diverse population of youth and their families. Key components of…

Calls for expanded use of tested child mental health interventions in child welfare practice add new urgency to the longstanding question of how to enhance parent engagement in child welfare services, where low and uneven levels of engagement are pervasive, and services to parents and children tend to be separated, leaving important opportunities…

When embedded within a continuum of mental health services including both prevention and treatment, school-based mental health identification programs can promote improved academic and mental health functioning among students. This article describes the scientific status of assessment instrumentation that may be used for early mental health…

The Evidence-Based Practice Attitude Scale (EBPAS) assesses mental health and social service provider attitudes toward adopting evidence-based practices. Scores on the EBPAS derive from 4 subscales (i.e., Appeal, Requirements, Openness, and Divergence) as well as the total scale, and preliminary studies have linked EBPAS scores to clinic structure…

Objective: We sought to examine follow-up service use by students identified at risk for suicidal behavior in a school-based screening program and assess barriers to seeking services as perceived by youths and parents. Method: We conducted a longitudinal study of 317 at-risk youths identified by a school-based suicide screening in six high schools…

Reviews have identified mental health interventions that are relevant to schools; unfortunately, this research pays insufficient attention to the school context. Several aspects of school context likely influence the ability of schools to change current practices or adopt new ones. Relying on an organizational framework, a three-level model of…

Summarizes key recommendations resulting from a meeting of national leaders in bioethics, multicultural research, and ethnic minority mental health. The recommendations focus on applying a cultural perspective to the evaluation of research risks and benefits; developing and implementing respectful informed consent procedures; developing and…

Describes current perspectives on evidence-based practices in psychology, medicine, and education; discusses challenges in the implementation and dissemination of research-based findings into schools; describes differences between current models of organizational behavior as studied in children's mental health services and in education; and…

Presents a response to commentaries regarding the main articles of this target issue. Suggests a model for school psychology research and practice that positions the discipline for leadership on the transactions that coexist among educational, cognitive, and developmental processes and mental health interventions. (Contains 11 references.) (GCP)

Argues that, although conceptualizing school psychology as primarily an indirect service specialty has advanced our thinking about effective service delivery, conceptualizing school psychological services from a public health perspective will provide an even broader framework that can increase both the efficacy and efficiency of school…

Discusses challenges to conducting research on effectiveness of community service systems that are family-based and school-centered: underidentification of children with emotional or behavioral disorders, lack of concordance between diagnostic criteria used in school versus mental health systems, problems of comorbidity, analysis of data from…

This article describes the development of the Head Start Mental Health Research Consortium, a research partnership between the Administration on Children, Youth and Families and the National Institute of Mental Health. The Consortium is designed to assess mental health needs of low-income children and optimal approaches for addressing these needs.…