Coaches and district leaders can use this brief to support their efforts of aligning and integrating School Mental Health (SMH) and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). The experiences of two districts are described to provide context in the application of the Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF).

The supply of school mental health (SMH) providers and services cannot meet the demand of students in-need, and this gap is expected to widen in coming years. One way to increase the reach of helpful services for youth is to grow the SMH workforce through task-shifting to paraprofessionals. Task-shifting could be especially promising in expanding…

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…

All four authors of this article are active in the movement toward more comprehensive school mental health (SMH) services involving community mental health staff joining school employees to increase the depth and quality of programs and services within the multitiered system of support (MTSS; Garbacz, 2019; Mellin & Weist, 2011; Weist, Lever,…

It is imperative that educators take a positive and preventive approach to support students and promote school safety. This article addresses the importance of identifying students who need additional mental health support and providing the highest quality support. These include best practices of emphasizing strength-based approaches, working with…

In this article, we follow up on recommendations from the Division for Emotional and Behavioral Health (DEBH) for providing school mental health (SMH) services by offering additional implementation suggestions for teachers and school staff. We highlight the need for and urgency of SMH services, particularly during and after the pandemic, and also…

Nearly 14% of all youth display disordered eating patterns. Despite the prevalence of these disorders, there is limited literature on the integration of eating disorder support services in schools. Further, there is often limited eating disorder knowledge and training for school mental health (SMH) professionals. This paper describes a two-phase…

This article reviews the development of the Southeastern School Behavioral Health Community (SSBHC), which began in 2013 to bring coherence to the school behavioral health (SBH) agenda in South Carolina and has since expanded to become a regional effort in the southeastern United States. The term SBH is used to convey community mental health…

Partnerships with families in education settings should emphasize their roles as active and engaged co-equal partners. However, common practices in schools are to involve families at school-based events and share information with them about their child's education in a manner that does not promote two-way interactions. The purpose of this paper is…

This article presents the psychometric properties of the Expanded School Mental Health Collaboration Instrument [Community Version], a measure for assessing collaboration from the perspective of community-based mental health professionals working in schools. A three-scale instrument (Types of Collaboration, Influences on Collaboration, and…

The Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) blends school mental health practices, systems, and resources into all levels of a multitiered system of supports (e.g., positive behavior interventions and supports). The ISF aims to improve mental health and school performance for all students by emphasizing effective school-wide promotion and…

Although it is known some youth access mental health services more readily than others, most service use studies used variable-centric approaches that produced heterogeneous groups and results that require parents and educators to understand diagnostic categories. Person-centered approaches group youth with similar patterns of behavioral and…

Despite a high dropout rate and poor educational and posteducational outcomes, limited evidence-based practices have been validated with students at the high school level who have emotional and behavioral problems. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a multitreatment, assessment-based intervention package. Participants were 647…

Background: Integrated healthcare delivered by work groups in nontraditional service settings is increasingly common, yet contemporary implementation frameworks typically assume a single organization--or organizational unit--within which system-level processes influence service quality and implementation success. Recent implementation frameworks…

A recently defined interconnected systems framework (ISF) provides explicit guidance on steps to align positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) and expanded school mental health (SMH) within the multitiered system of support (MTSS). As PBIS and SMH strategies align, there are opportunities to expand and improve effective programs and…