Among all in-school factors that impact student learning, teachers carry the most weight -- but school leaders are not far behind. Decades of research have proven the positive influence principals can have on student achievement, school climate and teaching quality. New evidence suggests that their impact may be even greater than previously…

Objective: Through a holistic health lens, the current study examines the effects of weight-related issues and stress on suicidality while controlling for depressive symptoms in college students. Participants: In total, 872 undergraduate and graduate students at DePaul University completed the American College Health Association-National College…

Are there gender-specific risk factors for suicidal activity among patients with schizophrenia and depression? A total of 74 schizophrenia patients (51 men, 23 women) and 77 unipolar nonpsychotic depressed patients (26 men, 51 women) from the Chicago Follow-up Study were studied prospectively at 2 years posthospitalization and again at 7.5 years.…

The suicide rate among American adolescents between the ages of 14-25 has dramatically increased during the last 50 years, and this fact has been the focus of extensive social-scientific investigation. To date, however, research focusing on the joint effects of mental health, family, and contextual-level predictors on adolescents' suicidal…

Identifying whether suicides in a region are due to characteristics of the residents living there or to some enduring feature of the region is difficult when using cross-sectional studies. To distinguish these factors, we compared the suicides of a region's residents with people who were temporarily visiting the region. Using U.S. death records…

Purpose of the Study: Recent demographic growth of the U.S. Chinese aging population calls for comprehensive understanding of their unique health needs. The objective of this study is to examine the perceptions, social determinants of depressive symptoms as well as their impact on health and well-being in a community-dwelling U.S. Chinese aging…

Recent campus crises have highlighted that campus administrators will be judged by three things: What the campus was doing before the crisis, its immediate response during the crisis, and the follow-up after the crisis. Born out of the call by Virginia Tech's Zenobia Hikes for urgent action to stem the tide of societal violence, and the NASPA…

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…

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…

Filicide (the killing of a child by a parent) followed by the offender's suicide is a tragic but, fortunately, rare event. The contexts and circumstances surrounding filicide-suicide may provide insight into parental psychology. The authors test several hypotheses about filicide-suicide using a database including incident-level information on…

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 contribution of parent report to youth report in defining psychiatric "caseness" among incarcerated youths. The authors compared reports with each other and examined the influence of varying case definitions. Method: A total of 569 youths in New Jersey, Illinois, and South Carolina admitted into secure placement…

The authors work in a seventh and eighth grade middle school in a suburb of Chicago. At their school, they have built a community of learners in which they share a deep commitment to a progressive, child-centered approach to education. As stated in their district's philosophy document, they believe that "a school must be a place where…

This article discusses the pros and cons of "involuntary withdrawals" in cases of students who are at risk of suicide. A June, 2005, Massachusetts Superior Court summary judgment ruling in the case of "Shin v. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)" concluded that MIT administrators owed a duty of care to suicide victim,…

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…