Improving School Mental Health via National Learning Collaboratives With State and Local Teams: Components, Feasibility, and Initial Impacts.

School systems need practical and effective quality improvement strategies to advance school mental health promotion, prevention, and treatment services. Collectively, these efforts can be used to promote child and adolescent mental health, well-being, and academic success. The current study reports on the feasibility, initial impacts of, and recommendations from a national, multi-level learning collaborative conducted by the National Center for School Mental Health, University of Maryland School of Medicine and administered throughout the United States.

Using a Culturally Responsive, Antiracist, and Equitable Approach to School Mental Health.

Amidst a national youth mental health crisis, comprehensive school mental health systems offer an opportunity to promote positive mental health for all students. To advance health equity, schools benefit from a culturally responsive, antiracist, and equitable (CARE) framework to address the youth mental health crisis. This article describes how to integrate CARE practices within a multi-tiered system of support for mental health in schools.

The State School Mental Health Profile: Findings from 25 States.

Background: State-level leadership and conditions are instrumental to local and regional comprehensive school mental health system (CSMHS) quality, sustainability, and growth. However, systematic documentation of state-level school mental health (SMH) policy, infrastructure, funding, and practice is limited.

Methods: Using a multi-phase, multi-method process, we developed the State School Mental Health Profile (State Profile) to offer a comprehensive landscape of state SMH efforts.

Evaluating Strategies to Promote Effective, Multidisciplinary Team Collaboration in School Mental Health.

Multidisciplinary teams of school- and community-employed mental health, health, and educational staff work together in schools to offer a full continuum of mental health promotion, prevention, early intervention, and treatment services and supports. Intentional teaming structures and practices are essential to ensure teams deliver effective, coordinated services and supports. The current study investigated the extent to which continuous quality improvement strategies improved school mental health team performance during a 15-month national learning collaborative for 24 school district teams.

Using the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child Model to Support Mental Health in Schools.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased already high rates of student mental health concerns and further underscored inequities and disparities in access to services and care. As schools continue to address the effects of the pandemic, they must prioritize student mental health and well-being. In this commentary, using feedback from the Maryland School Health Council, we present the connection between mental health in school and the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model, a school health model commonly employed by schools and school districts.

Educator-Informed Development of a Mental Health Literacy Course for School Staff: Classroom Well-Being Information and Strategies for Educators (Classroom WISE).

Educators play a critical role in promoting mental health and well-being with their students. Educators also recognize that they lack knowledge and relevant learning opportunities that would allow them to feel competent in supporting student mental health. As such, educators require resources and training to allow them to develop skills in this area.

Associations between socioeconomic gradients and racial disparities in preadolescent brain outcomes.

Background: The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which socioeconomic characteristics of the home and neighborhood are associated with racial inequalities in brain outcomes.

Methods: We performed a cross-sectional analysis of the baseline dataset (v.2.

Peer victimization (bullying) on mental health, behavioral problems, cognition, and academic performance in preadolescent children in the ABCD Study.

Objective: Peer victimization is a substantial early life stressor linked to psychiatric symptoms and poor academic performance. However, the sex-specific cognitive or behavioral outcomes of bullying have not been well-described in preadolescent children.

Methods: Using the baseline dataset of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study 2.

Advancing Mental Health Screening in Schools: Innovative, Field-Tested Practices and Observed Trends During a 15-Month Learning Collaborative.

Schools are well positioned to facilitate early identification and intervention for youth with emerging mental health needs through universal mental health screening. Early identification of mental health concerns via screening can improve long-term student development and success, but schools face logistical challenges and lack of pragmatic guidance to develop local screening policies and practices. This study summarizes mental health screening practices tested by six school districts participating in a 15-month learning collaborative.

Associations between potentially traumatic events and psychopathology among preadolescents in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study.

The current cross-sectional study aimed to extend the literature on childhood adversity by examining the unique associations between potentially traumatic events (PTEs) and a range of mental health concerns, including domain-specific versus comorbid concerns. Participants were 11,877 preadolescents (47.8% female, 15.

Associations Between School Mental Health Team Membership and Impact on Service Provision.

Unlabelled: Schools are the most common venue in which children and youth receive mental health services. To organize delivery of mental health care to such a large number of children, use of school teams is often recommended. Yet, there is limited empirical literature about the composition of school mental health teams or teams' relations to service provision.

Can We Move the Needle on School Mental Health Quality Through Systematic Quality Improvement Collaboratives?

Learning collaboratives (LCs) have often been used to improve somatic health care quality in hospitals and other medical settings, and to some extent to improve social services and behavioral health care. This initiative is the first demonstration of a national, systematic LC to advance comprehensive school mental health system quality among school district teams. Twenty-four districts representing urban, rural, and suburban communities in 14 states participated in one of two 15-month LCs.

Correction to: Enhancing the Relevance and Effectiveness of a Youth Gambling Prevention Program for Urban, Minority Youth: A Pilot Study of Maryland Smart Choices.

The article Enhancing the Relevance and Effectiveness of a Youth Gambling Prevention Program for Urban, Minority Youth: A Pilot Study of Maryland Smart Choices, written by Brittany R. Parham, Carl Robertson, Nancy Lever, Sharon Hoover, Tracy Palmer, Phyllis Lee, Kelly Willis and Joanna Prout, was originally published electronically on the publisher's internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 18 August 2018 with open access. With the author(s)' decision to step back from Open Choice, the copyright of the article changed on 10 September 2018 to © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2018 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of copyright.

Enhancing the Relevance and Effectiveness of a Youth Gambling Prevention Program for Urban, Minority Youth: A Pilot Study of Maryland Smart Choices.

Youth with problem gambling behaviors are susceptible to serious academic, behavioral, and mental health consequences including school failure, criminal involvement, and depression. Coupled with increased exposure to gambling formats, issues related to youth gambling have been deemed a serious public health issue requiring increased prevention efforts. However, the literature is limited in terms of evidence-based gambling prevention programs warranting the development of The Maryland Smart Choices Program (MD-Smart Choices), a gambling prevention program for middle and high school youth.

Telemental Health in Schools.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to describe the potential and limits of school telemental health (TMH) to support a full continuum from mental health promotion to intervention, particularly for students less likely to access community care.

Methods: A review of school TMH literature and model programs, and of data from focus groups with child psychiatry fellows, was undertaken to inform best practices and future directions for TMH in schools.

Results: Existing data suggest that TMH with children and adolescents is promising and well received.

Strategies for integrating mental health into schools via a multitiered system of support.

To fully realize the potential of mental health supports in academic settings, it is essential to consider how to effectively integrate the mental health and education systems and their respective resources, staffing, and structures. Historically, school mental health services have not effectively spanned a full continuum of care from mental health promotion to treatment, and several implementation and service challenges have evolved. After an overview of these challenges, best practices and strategies for school and community partners are reviewed to systematically integrate mental health interventions within a school's multitiered system of student support.

Challenges to collaboration in school mental health and strategies for overcoming them.

Background: This article reviews challenges to collaboration in school mental health (SMH) and presents practical strategies for overcoming them.

Methods: The importance of collaboration to the success of SMH programs is reviewed, with a particular focus on collaboration between school- and community-employed professionals. Challenges to effective collaboration between school- and community-employed professionals in SMH are considered.

Telepsychiatry and school mental health.

The provision of mental health services in schools has been one effective strategy for reaching out to a greater number of youth to identify and provide treatment for mental health issues. With the increasing challenges related to shortages in child and adolescent psychiatrists, it is critical to develop models of care that can maximize a full range of mental health services for all children and adolescents who need them. Telehealth offers an innovative distance technology strategy to effectively and efficiently provide access to psychiatric services in schools.