The 2002 Fulbright team, led by Zheng Zhou of St. John's University, consisted of 12 professionals in the fields of education, counseling psychology, and school psychology. Spending one month visiting elementary schools, universities, governmental bodies, hospitals, and private schools throughout China, the Fulbright team had an opportunity to…

The longitudinal comparison study of the national evaluation of the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program assesses factors in service delivery systems that may shape the impact of systems of care. We evaluated the extent to which services embodying the principles of a system of care, as measured by…

Inter-agency collaboration, service coordination, and the creation of successful partnerships among parents, teachers, and human services professionals continues to be a challenge for the development of responsive community-based systems of care for at-risk youth and their families. We explore how one inner-city neighborhood struggles to create…

The author summarizes trends in infant-toddler child care before 1960 and describes how interdisciplinary meetings on early development at the Mental Health Study Center of the National Institute of Mental Health in the 1970s led to the founding of The National Center for Clinical Infant Programs (now ZERO TO THREE) in 1977. Periodic legislative…

Objective: To study the rate of, and factors associated with, recognition of psychiatric disorders and self-perceived problems among 18-year-old adolescent boys. Method: The study population consisted of 2347 Finnish boys born during 1981 attending military call-up (79.7% of the original sample). At age 8, the boys were evaluated by parental and…

Objective: To explore factors that facilitate the receipt of mental health treatment among juvenile crime victims. Method: Telephone interviews were conducted with a national sample of 157 caretakers whose children had suffered a serious sexual or physical assault in the previous year. Results: Twenty-two percent of caretakers had thought about…

This study describes family-based therapy utilization patterns by the entire population of marijuana-abusing adolescents that received services in the State of Florida in 1997 through 1999, using data from the statewide Florida Mental Health and Substance Abuse Measurement Data. The population consisted of 38,281 adolescent admissions. The results…

The first PhD specialty program in Geropsychology that launched in fall, 2004 at CU-Colorado Springs is described. Consistent with a scientist-practitioner model, the curriculum sequence builds systematically from basic to complex knowledge and skills across the domains of scientific psychology, research methodology, general clinical,…

This article describes the evolution of full service schools. Full service schools stress prevention, collaboration and systems change. Prevention is geared toward corrections, mental health and welfare, all topics of keen interest to people working in and studying criminal justice. By providing mental health services at the school for both…

The use of clinical supervision is central to mental health work. In this article, the authors propose using practice cases drawn from characters found in literature, popular fiction, biographies, television, and movies as one method for clinical supervision and professional development in the mental health skill areas of client assessment, case…

Historically, the policy of deinstitutionalization has resulted in the closing of many federal and state mental health facilities. This has caused many criminal justice professionals and social workers to question where the mentally ill are placed when they are no longer in a treatment facility. With the abundance of offenders with mental health…

A marked increase in the number of college students on medications for depression, attention deficit disorder, and other conditions may have intimidated counselors and educators into believing that they all need to be medical experts. The widespread practice of medicalizing behavior and experience contrasts dramatically with the approach in which…

Children in foster care face a challenging journey through childhood. In addition to the troubling family circumstances that bring them into state care, they face additional difficulties within the child welfare system that may further compromise their healthy development. This article discusses the importance of safety and stability to healthy…

Elias, Zins, Graczyk, and Weissberg (2003) have written a concise summary of the daunting challenges and possible solutions to improve outcomes for students with mental health needs. As a special educator, the author wants to focus his comments on the potential benefits of school-wide approaches for students with the greatest psychosocial needs.…

To facilitate the recovery of people with mental illness (consumers of mental health services), social workers must be strengths-focused and believe in the potential for consumer growth and improvement. Unfortunately, social workers often share the negative, stigmatizing view of mental illness held by much of the general population. In this…