Despite the national impact on students due to COVID-19, for Black students living in the state of Florida, the disruption of their social, emotional, psychological, and academic normalcy was complicated further. At the height of the pandemic, Florida consistently ranked in the top three states in the U.S. for total COVID-19 cases; moreover, even…

Three weeks after the February 14, 2018, shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 people were killed and 17 more injured, the Florida state legislature passed a bill, which among other things, designated two new roles for each school district: a director of safe schools and a mental health coordinator. These…

Social emotional learning has become a top priority for public education. In response to growing understanding of the importance of mental health, educators have implemented significant measures to help children in crisis and explicitly teach skills to manage emotions in the classroom. Duval County (FL) Public Schools (DCPS) began its first mental…

More than 260 presidentially-declared major disasters have occurred since 2017, affecting every state and several U.S. territories, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Many of these natural disasters have had devastating effects, including rendering K-12 school facilities unusable for extended periods of time. These…

The rapid expansion of public-school preschool programs significantly challenges America's school administrators, teachers, and school professionals. The complex issues of preschool mental health needs, expulsion, and suspension are at the forefront. In the United States, schools are reporting rapidly increasing numbers of preschool programs,…

As the infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH)-informed workforce adapted to the unexpected and challenging events brought on by COVID-19, associations for infant mental health (AIMHs), whose primary role is to support the workforce, stepped up and offered what very few organizations could during the onset of the pandemic: opportunities…

Children in the child welfare system frequently experience trauma within the caregiving relationship. These traumatic experiences may be compounded by system trauma and place these children at high risk of emotional disorders and placement in out-of-home (OOH) mental health treatment programs. This article reviews the literature on trauma and…

Individuals who are indirectly exposed to disasters may be affected psychologically. The impact of the 2010 Haiti earthquake reverberated throughout the Haitian American community in Miami, Florida. Many within the community held strong transnational family and friendship bonds to their homeland. We examined associations between indicators of…