Youth spend an increasing amount of time at school and are experiencing greater mental health needs in the school setting. School professionals have the responsibility to respond and assist in managing the mental health needs of students. Illinois has implemented the Illinois Mental Health First Aid Training Act to provide psychoeducational…

Infant/Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC) is a relationship-based, collaborative support designed to improve the capacity of early childhood professionals to promote children's mental health. Social and emotional development is the foundation for success in learning and in life. It begins in children's early relationships with…

Congress set requirements for child welfare agencies to respond to emotional trauma associated with child maltreatment and removal. In meeting these requirements, agencies should develop policies that address child trauma. To assist in policy development, this study analyzes more than 14,000 clinical assessments from child welfare in Illinois.…

Police agencies across the country are struggling to respond to significant number of persons with serious mental illness, who are landing on their doorsteps with sometimes tragic consequences. Arguably, the most widely adopted approach, the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT) model, is a specialized police-based program designed to improve officers'…

Investments in early childhood programs are widely viewed as a promising strategy to improve the future educational achievement of disadvantaged young children. However, it can be difficult for teachers to maintain program quality if children in the classroom display challenging behaviors. For example, when some children act out aggressively or…

Preschool teachers' job stressors have received increasing attention but have been understudied in the literature. We investigated the impacts of a classroom-based intervention, the Chicago School Readiness Project (CSRP), on teachers' perceived job stressors and confidence, as indexed by their perceptions of job control, job resources, job…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Onunaku, Ahlers, and Gilkerson describe Illinois's effort to build infant mental health capacity within the Part C Early Intervention system and Wisconsin's effort to build capacity for infant and early childhood mental health services statewide across all systems that serve children. Because of multiple funding streams, families often experience…

Background: Despite the growing number of school-based interventions designed to reduce childhood obesity or otherwise promote health, no models or materials were found for Jewish schools. The current study describes an effort within a Jewish school system in Chicago to create, implement, and evaluate a school-based intervention tailored to the…

An increasing number of students are taking medications while they are in school or are under the influence of medication during school hours. In a novel effort, clinical pharmacists and mental health therapists worked together to provide "mini-in-service" educational programs on psychological disorders and medications used to treat…

Enhancing Developmentally Oriented Primary Care (EDOPC) is a formal didactic curriculum based on Healthy Steps materials that is designed to improve practicing pediatricians' knowledge and confidence in developmental screening within the medical home. We modified the EDOPC program to provide a formal curriculum to pediatric residents serving…

Describes and evaluates a model for agency-based staff development training for a county mental health unit. Concludes it can be a useful way to identify and resolve problems. (Author/MCF)