The authors remember the life of Katie Beckett, who was an outspoken advocate for disability rights and inspired the Katie Beckett Waiver Program, which allowed children to continue to be eligible for Medicaid and to have their health care needs provided in the home rather than being forced to be in a hospital or institution. Together, Katie and…

Nurses as accessible, helping adults within schools have daily opportunities to reach adolescents with unmet mental health needs. Understanding the relationship between frequent clinic visits or somatic complaints as a sign of underlying problems, which may be organic or psychoemotional in origin, requires the unique skill set of the school nurse.…

Service users are increasingly involved in health and social care education, whilst the government is committed to increasing access to employment for people with mental health needs. The benefits of involving service users in social work education have been identified, including increasing skills, confidence, and building capacity; yet there is…

School counselors are a well-positioned resource to reach the significant number of children and adolescents with mental health problems. In this special school counseling issue of "The Professional Counselor," some articles focus on systemic, top-down advocacy efforts as the point of intervention for addressing child and adolescent…

In 2002, the Institute of Medicine released Unequal Treatment: "Confronting Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Healthcare", a landmark monograph documenting health disparities in the U.S. health care system. Since the publication of "Unequal Treatment", the field of pediatric health disparities research has advanced significantly…

Approximately 20% of children in the United States experience significant mental, emotional, or behavioral symptoms that would qualify them for a psychiatric diagnosis (Burns et al., 1995; Costello et al., 2003). Unfortunately, only 15%-30% of these children receive any type of help or support (Ringel & Sturm, 2001; United States Public Health…

Campus police officers are often among the initial contacts for behavioral incidents involving people with mental illness. Their training and access to resources influence decisions to direct the individual to support services and/or through campus disciplinary processes and/or the criminal justice system. Over the past decade, there has been an…

Measurement of race and ethnicity is integral to assessing and addressing health disparities experienced by minorities. However, the unique experiences of Latinos related to race and the discordance between understandings of race among Latinos and the predominant U.S. conceptualizations of this construct impact how Latinos respond to measurement…

The Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi) was founded on September 2, 1968, in San Francisco, California, in response to the American Psychological Association's failure to address the mental health needs of the Black community. This revolutionary idea was borne out of the efforts of Black early career psychologists and student activists from…

The health care needs of older adults can be complex and multifaceted. Safe, effective, equitable, and person-centered service provision relies on skilled interprofessional, team-based practice. Too often, students seeking a career specializing in gerontology are not exposed to such interprofessional, team-based learning and practice during their…

National and international organizations have identified schools as having an "unparalleled" potential to offer supportive services for children's mental health needs. This article reviews research and practice related to children's grief and specifies strategies for classroom-based interventions. In particular, school psychologists are encouraged…

This general review situates Australian research within a framework that quantifies and describes mental health needs of the population with intellectual disabilities across the life span, surveys service provision, and develops the evidence base to inform clinicians regarding assessment and management of psychopathology and psychiatric disorder…

The need to attend to terminally ill persons and provide improved quality of living and dying should be a national priority in Canada. Hospice palliative care (HPC), a person-centered approach that addresses the needs of the whole person, improves the quality of living and dying of persons facing a life-threatening illness. To ensure Canadians are…

The rising prevalence of obesity in society has resulted in an increased need for physical education teachers to create learning opportunities that promote physical activity among children. However, the presence of anti-fat attitudes and a limited understanding of the challenges associated with being overweight in a physical activity environment…

This "2018-2019 Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee (IACC) Strategic Plan Update" is the work of the IACC membership that was appointed under the Autism CARES Act of 2014. The Committee agreed that the "2016-2017 IACC Strategic Plan" reflected a comprehensive review of the state of the field and provided a set of 23 new…