As part of the recent 'therapeutic turn' in education, schools are now commonly seen as a place for mental health guidance and support. This often involves "interventions"--special curricula of lessons or activities (e.g. counselling sessions), which aim to either prevent mental health problems or manage those that have already started.…

This manuscript provides a detailed examination of comprehensive school-based dialectical behavior therapy (CSB-DBT) as a critical component to the DBT services continuum provided in schools. Because suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents along with increased prevalence of self-harming behavior, schools often find…

Child mental health is a growing concern for policymakers across the global north. Schools have become a key site for mental health interventions, with new programmes aimed at promoting 'resilience', through which children may maintain or regain mental health during adversity. As one of the first studies to explore the early impact of intensive…

Despite the prevalence and negative consequences of depressive disorders among youth, as well as the need for schools to adopt and implement a continuum of mental health services to address depressive disorders, school mental health providers receive very limited guidance in the selection and application of appropriate evidence-based depression…

There is substantial research evidence for the effectiveness of school mental health strategies across problem areas, developmental levels, and the prevention-intervention spectrum. At the same time, it is clear that the education and mental health fields continue to struggle to apply this evidence at any level of scale. This commentary reflects…

This is the second of three annual reports evaluating the implementation and effects of two Delaware weighted funding programs for disadvantaged K-12 schools during the 2019-2020 to 2021-2022 school years: Opportunity Funding and the Student Success Block Grant (SSBG). The authors also examined best practices and coronavirus pandemic adaptations…

The focus of this report is on mental health interventions delivered in K-12 neighborhood public schools. A vast array of commercially available programs, conceptual frameworks, and approaches to school-based mental health are not unanimously recommended, applied, or agreed upon. This poses a challenge to any comprehensive description or…

For the last decade, there has been growing concern regarding the rising rates of youth engagement in self-injury and suicide. The worldwide outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has elevated these concerns due to increased risk factors pertaining to social, family, economic, and health stressors, in addition to changes to typical…

Parents' health and children's health are closely intertwined--healthier parents have healthier children, and vice versa. Genetics accounts for some of this relationship, but much of it can be traced to environment and behavior, and the environmental and behavioral risk factors for poor health disproportionately affect families living in…

Many evaluations of programs tend to show few outcomes. One solution to this has been an increasing prominence of the movement that requires programs to implement evidence-based interventions (EBIs). But in a complex world with complex organizations and complex interventions, many challenges have arisen to the implementation of EBIs with fidelity…

Given the increasing identification of children with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD), it is imperative that innovative ways of addressing these concerns are explored. Fewer than half of students identified with mental illness receive treatment, leaving a significant proportion of students to cope with mental illness without support. One…

Childhood trauma affects many youths across the United States and has a devastating impact on their functioning, well-being, and overall academic and vocational outcomes. Experiences of psychological trauma can impede cognitive, social, and emotional development in childhood, which can impair youth academic achievement, behavior, interpersonal…

Professional social workers and other mental health providers have for many years been involved in delivering treatment and support services focused on the needs of adults with severe mental illnesses living in the community. While some models have evolved largely through practice experience, others have developed through research paradigms in…

Background: Children involved in the child welfare system (CWS) have a greater need for mental health treatment relative to children in the general population. However, the research on mental health treatment for children in the CWS is sparse with only one known previous review of mental health services with children in the CWS. Objective: This…

In this paper, we explore the unmet need for substance use disorder (SUD) treatment among youth, its consequences, and the opportunity to address this gap due to the expansion of behavioral health services to school-based settings under the Parity and Affordable Care Acts. We discuss the importance of using evidence-based approaches to assessment…