The Student Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (SSWQ) is a 16-item measure of school-specific subjective wellbeing intended for mental health screening applications. We extended past validation work to scrutinize the SSWQ's previously proposed factor structure (i.e., four group factors; one general factor) and score reliability using two random…

Meeting the needs of gifted students is particularly challenging for school counselors. This practitioner action research study examined the effectiveness of implementing complete universal mental health screening with early college high school students. Using a complete mental health approach, we classified students into need-based groups. The…

Background: teen Mental Health First Aid (tMHFA) is an Australian school-based universal program for grade 10 to 12 students. tMHFA teaches teens how to recognize and respond to a peer in crisis or experiencing mental health concerns. Methods: Schools implementing tMHFA in 2019 and 2020 were propensity score matched, yielding a sample of…

The purpose of this study was to explore career outcomes in young adulthood among adolescents with ADHD and/or high abilities. The sample included respondents who had the ability and ADHD measures from Waves 1 (1995), 3 (2002), and 4 (2009) of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent and Adult Health in-home questionnaire. Using multiple…

Universal screening continues to be a missed opportunity for addressing mental health in schools. The current study compared three separate self-report screening tools: the Behavior Assessment System for Children-Third Edition: Behavioral and Emotional Screening System (BASC-3 BESS), Youth Internalizing and Externalizing Problems Screener (YIEPS),…

Adolescents in the urban public school system experience childhood trauma that sometimes makes it difficult to focus on learning. Even more so, sometimes trauma experienced by youth manifests in disruptive behaviors in the school setting. Traditionally, urban public schools have focused on teaching and learning academics, generally neglecting the…

The COVID-19 pandemic and resulting stay-at-home orders created a need for assessing elementary, middle, and high school students' experienced stressors associated with the coronavirus situation. In collaboration with a school district wanting information about their students' well-being during the pandemic school shut-down, the current study…

Purpose: To examine remote learning practices and difficulties during initial stay-at-home orders during the COVID-19 pandemic in adolescents with and without ADHD. Methods: Participants were 238 adolescents (132 males; 118 with ADHD) ages 15.64-17.99 years and their parents. Adolescents and parents completed questionnaires in May/June 2020 when…

A multisite cluster-randomized trial (by school) was conducted to examine the effects of a combined mental health literacy and dialectical behavior therapy skills program implemented by teachers on three protective factors related to social and emotional well-being. The sample of eight schools that were randomly assigned to intervention included…

This study involved a secondary analysis of data collected across the 2016-2017 academic year to determine the impact on students' social and emotional well-being of a new hip-hop lyricism course implemented by a school counselor. The new course introduced hip-hop and spoken word therapy into a specially designed classroom curriculum to meet the…

Since research shows that interactive prevention programs are more effective than didactic-based lectures, the current study examined the efficacy of an interactive substance abuse prevention program for adolescents. Participants completed pre- and post-surveys examining their substance use knowledge and program perceptions. The program included…

Research has shown that students in Advanced Placement (AP) classes and International Baccalaureate (IB) programs experience higher levels of stress compared to students in general education classes. Elevated stress can serve as a risk factor for students' academic and mental health problems. Given the documented stress of these students,…

Safety is essential to student well-being and success. Because of this, a large percentage of parents and children are concerned about school safety. To get a better understanding of school safety from a student's perspective, ACT-tested students were surveyed and asked about their school's climate and the types of safety measures their school…

Is compulsive Internet use (CIU) an antecedent to poor mental health, a consequence, or both? Study 1 used a longitudinal design to track the development of CIU and mental health in Grade 8 (N = 1,030 males, 1,038 females, M[subscript age] = 13.7), 9, 10, and 11. Study 2 extended Study 1 by examining the kinds of Internet behaviors most strongly…

Parental involvement in education remains important for facilitating positive youth development. This study conceptualized parental involvement as a multidimensional construct--including school-based involvement, home-based involvement, and academic socialization--and examined the effects of different types of parental involvement in 10th grade on…