Research Findings: Using longitudinal survey data from the Welfare, Children, and Families Study: A Three-City Study ("n" = 135), this study examines how congruence in maternal and child care provider sensitivities contributes to young children's social, emotional, and academic outcomes among low-income minority families. Congruence…

School psychologists must have a solid understanding of how to evaluate psychological trauma. In their line of work, they have found that the PREPaRE model of school crisis intervention provides important guidance when addressing this issue. Specifically, the PREPaRE model argues that school psychologists need to conduct a needs assessment before…

The mental health of today's college students continues to be a top-level concern for institutions of higher education, whether it is viewed from the perspective of staffing mental health services on campus, responding to after-hours crises in residence halls, providing accessible treatment with limited budgets, managing behavioral threats, or…

Research Findings: This article reports on two studies. Study 1 considered ways in which Head Start teachers' (n = 90) psychosocial stressors are related to teachers' ability to maintain a positive classroom emotional climate and effective behavior management in preschool classrooms. Study 2 tested the hypothesis that among teachers randomly…

Mexican immigrant mothers and their children encounter many stressors as they adapt to life in the United States. This article reports a secondary data analysis from a school-based home visiting program focused on assisting Mexican immigrant mothers and their children develop problem-solving strategies in dealing with stressors. Data were…

Early childhood mental health (ECMH) services are relationship-based since infants and young children depend on parents/family/care-takers to provide for their basic survival needs and their social emotional health. ECMH is defined by ZERO TO THREE as the "social, emotional, and behavioral well-being of children birth through five and their…

In the fall of 1984, the University of Illinois instituted a formal program to reduce the rate of suicide among its enrolled students. At the core of the program is a policy that requires any student who threatens or attempts suicide to attend four sessions of professional assessment. The consequences for failing to comply with the program include…

Objective: To examine the associations among mental health problems, maternal monitoring and permissiveness, mother-daughter communication and attachment, and sexual behaviors among African American girls receiving outpatient psychiatric care. Youths with mental health problems report higher rates of HIV-risk behavior than do their peers, and…

The Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), a randomized, classroom-based mental health intervention, aimed to improve teachers' behavior management of preschoolers' dysregulated behavior. The current follow-up study examines potential impacts on academic skills of first graders by enhancing their ATL. This investigation seeks to answer three…

Several acculturation theories note the importance of surrounding context, but few studies describe neighborhood influences on immigrant adaptation. The purpose of this study was to examine relationships among neighborhood immigrant concentration, acculturation, and alienation for 151 women aged 44-80 from the former Soviet Union who lived in the…

This article describes the theory and practice of Art Therapy Connection (ATC), an inner city, yearlong school art therapy program in Chicago, IL, for students identified as being at risk of failing grades 3-12. The ATC program helps to address the mental health needs of students living in impoverished communities and the constant threats they…

University-community partnerships are widely recognized as critical to the success of community research and advocacy work but difficult to form and sustain. This article will describe a unique facet of that partnership, namely the collaboration between mental health clinicians and community consultants, a partnership that our data suggest was a…

The State of the Science conference was held in May, 2007 as part of the ongoing series of national conferences, "Building on Family Strengths," conducted by the Research and Training Center on Family Support and Children's Mental Health at Portland State University. The theme of this State-of-the Science conference was "Effective…

Few studies have examined the epidemiology of preschoolers' psychopathology. This study included 796 4-year-old children recruited from schools and pediatric practices in a diverse, urban area. Psychiatric disorder was assessed by a structured interview adapted for preschool children and by questionnaire. The most common disorders were…

We examined the differential outcomes in residential treatment for youths with conduct disorder (CD)--with special attention paid to interactions with age and gender--in a sample of children and adolescents in 50 residential treatment centers and group homes across Illinois. Multi-disciplinary teams rated youths ages 6-20 (N = 457) on measures of…