Children and youth in foster care and their caregivers often experience mental health challenges. Rural settings introduce barriers that prevent these youth from accessing such services. Nevertheless, rural area school personnel, and particularly special educators, are positioned to help improve access to mental health services for foster care…

Climate change poses a threat to children, who are increasingly vulnerable, depending on adults to protect them from the impacts of these changes including extreme weather events, poor air and water quality and risk to mental health. Children living in poverty carry additional burdens and risks, living in environments that consistently experience…

Children's mental health services have experienced major cuts since 2010. In parallel, our education system has undergone a period of significant transformation. In this paper, I discuss the implications of these developments for the mental health of children and young people. This includes examination of the differing ways in which mental health…

When California's students return to school this fall, schools can play a pivotal role in preventing, assessing, and addressing trauma in order to support students' well-being. We summarize the existing evidence base on multi-tiered trauma-informed practices that offer increasingly intensive tiers of support. Although many multi-tiered models of…

This study aimed to assess the prevalence of depression and anxiety among (12) Iraqi refugee children, 6 males and 6 females (aged 7-14) who had fled ISIS and are residing in Jordan awaiting resettlement. The authors used four scales to measure depression, field observation, and structured interviews with the mothers to examine exile-related…

For more than a decade, the Foundation for Child Development, through the Young Scholars Program (YSP), funded studies about the early education, health, and well-being of children from low-income, immigrant families. Through YSP, the Foundation aimed to fill a gap in policy and practice-relevant research on young immigrant children. It invested…

It is now recognized that there is a very high prevalence of psychological disorders among children and adolescents and relatively few receive psychological treatment. In the current article, we present the argument that levels of distress and dysfunction among young people are substantially underestimated and the prevalence of psychological…

This 2012 research report, based on a national online survey conducted by the Canadian Teachers’ Federation (CTF) in collaboration with the Mental Health Commission of Canada, gathers the responses of over 3,900 teachers who voluntarily took part in the survey. Teachers were asked to identify the potential barriers to the provision of mental…

This information sheet summarizes material found in the "In-Depth General Information Guide to Childhood Traumatic Grief" and "In-Depth Information on Childhood Traumatic Grief for School Personnel." Childhood traumatic grief is a condition that some children develop after the death of a close friend or family member. Children who develop…

One of today's most pressing public health problems is the rise in childhood overweight and obesity. School-based health centers (SBHCs)--the convergence of public health, primary care, and mental health in schools--represent an important element in the public health toolbox for combating the challenging epidemic. When working side-by-side in a…

Scenes of public grieving such as followed the death of Princess Diana bear little resemblance to the "taboo" status of death and bereavement at an individual level. For schools and the support services with whom they work, responding to pupils' experiences of loss and death, especially of parents, is challenging. This paper draws on…

As knowledge of effective treatments for mental disorders has grown, so too has the field of mental health promotion and positive development. Studies completed during the last two decades have synthesized the state of mental health promotion and documented that universal mental health supports positively affect child and adolescent developmental…

Health professionals now understand that child and adolescent depression constitutes a major public health problem. Children's depressive symptoms can be subtle and varied. Adolescent diagnosis is complicated by behavioral manifestations related to hormonal changes. Etiology and treatment remain controversial. Recent pharmacotherapeutic…

Highlights issues facing teachers who have mentally ill students in their classes and ways for teachers to address the issues. Discusses in-school interventions, out-of-school treatment, and the role of the teacher as mediator in helping students relate to other mentally ill students and in offering support to parents. (MAB)

Outside of major illness or severe developmental problems, child mental health has not previously been a focus of much study. The West Australian Child Health Survey (WACHS) was one of the first surveys to specifically address mental health as part of an attempt to gain comprehensive data on child and adolescent health. During 1993, data were…