Untitled

About Mental Health
in Schools

To provide an overview of what the term Mental Health in Schools means, we have compiled here:

A brief introduction, entitled Mental Health in Schools: An Overview

A field-defining resource and reference work entitled: Mental Health in Schools: Guidelines, Models, Resources & Policy Considerations

H.S. Adelman, & L. Taylor (2002). Impediments to Enhancing Availability of Mental Health Services in Schools: Fragmentation, Overspecialization, Counterproductive Competition, and Marginalization.Paper commissioned by the National Association of School Psychologists and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Student Services (ERIC/CASS).

Youngsters' Mental Health and Psychosocial Problems: What are the Data?

Mental Health in Schools - A Sampling of References (from the Center's Quick Find Collection)

Links to Annotated Lists of Empirically Supported/ Evidence-Based Interventions for School-Aged Children and Adolescents

Addressing Barriers to Learning: A Comprehensive Approach to Mental Health in Schools

A Center policy tool entitled: New Directions for School & Community Initiatives to Address Barriers to Learning: Two Examples of Concept Papers to Inform and Guide Policy Makers.

H.S. Adelman, & L. Taylor (2002). Guide 7: Fostering School, Family, and Community Involvement. Guidebook in series, Safe and Secure: Guides to Creating Safer Schools.Developed by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.

A brief overview about our Center and the work we do.

Mental Health in Schools: An Overview

Why mental health
in schools?

It is, of course, not a new insight that physical and mental health concerns must be addressed if schools are to function satisfactorily and students are to succeed at school. It has long been acknowledged that a variety of psychosocial and health problems affect learning and performance in profound ways. Such problems are exacerbated as youngsters internalize the debilitating effects of performing poorly at school and are punished for the misbehavior that is a common correlate of school failure. Because of all this, school policy makers, have a lengthy (albeit somewhat reluctant) history of trying to assist teachers in dealing with problems that interfere with schooling. Prominent examples are seen in the range of counseling, psychological, and social service programs schools provide.

Adding to what school education support staff do, there has been renewed emphasis over the past 20 years in the health and social services arenas on increasing linkages between schools and community service agencies to enhance the well-being of young people and their families. This "school-linked services" agenda has added impetus to advocacy for mental health in schools.
xMore recently, the efforts of some advocates for school-linked services has merged with forces working to enhance initiatives for community schools, youth development, and the preparation of healthy and productive citizens and workers. The merger has expanded interest in social-emotional learning and protective factors as avenues to increase students' assets and resiliency and reduce risk factors.
Thus, varied policies and initiatives have emerged relevant to efforts to enhance mental health in schools. Some directly support school programs and personnel; others connect community programs and personnel with schools. As a result, most schools have some programs to address a range of mental health and psychosocial concerns (e.g., school adjustment and attendance problems, dropouts, physical and sexual abuse, substance abuse, relationship difficulties, emotional upset, delinquency, violence.)

School-based and school-linked programs have been developed for purposes of early intervention, crisis intervention and prevention, treatment, and promotion of positive social and emotional development. And, available research suggests that for some youngsters schools are the main providers of mental health services. As Burns and her colleagues report from the study of children's utilization of MH services in western North Carolina, "the major player in the de facto system of care was the education sector more than three-fourths of children receiving mental health services were seen in the education sector, and for many this was the sole source of care."

Advancing mental health in schools

Clearly, mental health activity is going on in schools. Equally evident, there is a great deal to be done to improve what is taking place. The current norm related to efforts to advance mental health policy is for a vast sea of advocates to compete for the same dwindling resources. This includes advocates representing different professional practitioner groups. Naturally, all such advocates want to advance their agenda. And, to do so, the temptation usually is to keep the agenda problem-focused and rather specific and narrow. Politically, this make some sense. But in the long-run, it may be counterproductive in that it fosters piecemeal, fragmented, and redundant policies and practices. Diverse school and community resources are attempting to address complex, multifaceted, and overlapping psychosocial and mental health concerns in highly fragmented and marginalized ways. This has led to redundancy, inappropriate competition, and inadequate results.
One response to this state of affairs is seen in the calls for realigning policy and practice around a cohesive framework based on well-conceived models and the best available scholarship. With specific respect to mental health in schools, it has been stressed that initiatives must connect in major ways with the mission of schools and integrate with a restructured system of education support programs and services.

From our perspective, it is time to take a close look at all the pieces. To date, there has been no comprehensive mapping and no overall analysis of the amount of resources used for efforts relevant to mental health in schools or of how they are expended. Without such a "big picture" analysis, policymakers and practitioners are deprived of information that is essential in determining equity and enhancing system effectiveness. The challenge for those focused on mental health in schools is not only to understand the basic concerns hampering the field, but to function on the cutting edge of change so that the concerns are effectively addressed.
Systemic changes must weave school owned resources and community owned resources together to develop comprehensive, multifaceted, and integrated approaches for addressing barriers to learning and enhancing healthy development. Moreover, pursuit of such changes also must address complications stemming from the scale of public education in the U.S.A. Currently, there are about 90,000 public schools in about 15,000 districts. Thus, efforts to advance mental health in schools also must adopt effective models and procedures for replication and "scale-up."

Needed: Strategic approaches & comprehensive frameworks to enhance policy & practice

Although efforts to advance mental health in schools often are hampered by competing initiatives and agendas, the diversity of initiatives has laid a foundation that can be built upon. There is a need, however, for increased emphasis on strategic approaches for enhancing policy and practice. Such strategic approaches can be fostered through efforts to unify thinking about mental health in schools, adoption of well-conceived guiding frameworks, and by support for development of focused networking. To these ends, the Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA (1) highlights the need for a broad perspective in thinking about and justifying "mental health" in schools, (2) promotes a working draft of comprehensive and multifaceted guidelines that provide a basis for operationally defining mental health in schools, (3) proposes an integrated framework for promoting healthy development and addressing barriers to learning at a school site in ways that can expand the impact of mental health in schools, and (4) pursues a wide variety of strategies designed to advance the field.

Ending the marginalization

Clearly, enhancing mental health in schools in comprehensive ways is not an easy task. Indeed, it is likely to remain an insurmountable task until school reformers accept the reality that such activity is essential and does not represent an agenda separate from a school's instructional mission. For this to happen, we must encourage them to view the difficulty of raising achievement test scores through the complementary lenses of addressing barriers to learning and promoting healthy development. When this is done, it is more likely that mental health in schools will be understood as essential to addressing barriers to learning and not as an agenda separate from a school's instructional mission.

Then, we must show how all policy, practice, and research related to mental health in schools, including the many categorical programs funded to deal with designated problems, can be woven into a cohesive continuum of interventions and integrated thoroughly with school reform efforts. In the process, we will need to stress the importance of school-community-home collaborations in weaving together the resources for comprehensive, multifaceted approaches.
In sum, advancing mental health in schools is about much more than expanding services and creating full service schools. It is about establishing comprehensive, multifaceted approaches that help ensure schools are caring and supportive places that maximize learning and well-being and strengthen students, families, schools, and neighborhoods.

School Mental Health Project/
Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA
In an effort to advance the field, the School Mental Health Project was established in 1986 in the Department of Psychology at UCLA to pursue theory, research, practice, and training related to addressing mental health and psychosocial concerns through school-based interventions. Under the auspices of the Project, the national Center for Mental Health in Schools was funded in l995 and, in October, 2000, began a second five year cycle of operation. The Center is one of two national centers focusing directly on mental health in schools.1 Its goals are to enhance in strategic ways (1) availability of and access to resources to improve and advance MH in schools, (2) the capacity of systems/personnel, and (3) the role of schools in addressing MH, psychosocial, and related health concerns.
From the perspective of the guiding frameworks described in various works generated by the project/center staff, addressing MH of youngsters involves ensuring

mental illness is understood within the broader perspective of psychosocial and related health problems and in terms of strengths as well as deficits

the roles of schools/communities/homes are enhanced and pursued jointly

equity considerations are confronted

the marginalization and fragmentation of policy, organizations, and daily practice are countered

the challenges of evidence-based strategies and achieving results are addressed.

Thus, the Center's work aims not only at improving practitioners' competence, but at fostering changes in the systems with which they work. Such activity also addresses the varying needs of locales and the problems of accommodating diversity among those trained and among populations served.
Given the number of schools across the country, resource centers such as ours must work in well-conceived strategic ways. Thus, our emphasis is on expanding programmatic efforts that enable all student to have an equal opportunity to succeed at school and on accomplishing essential systemic changes for sustainability and scale-up through (a) enhancing resource availability and the systems for delivering resources, (b) building state and local capacity, (c) improving policy, and (d) developing leadership.
The strategies for accomplishing all this include

connecting with major initiatives of foundations, federal government & policy bodies, and national associations;

connecting with major initiatives of state departments and policy bodies, counties, and school districts;

collaborating and network building for program expansion and systemic change;

providing catalytic training to stimulate interest in program expansion and systemic change;

catalytic use of technical assistance, internet, publications, resource materials, and regional meetings to stimulate interest in program expansion and systemic change.

Because we know that schools are not in the mental health business, all our work strives to approach mental health and psychosocial concerns in ways that integrally connect with school reform. We do this by integrating health and related concerns into the broad perspective of addressing barriers to learning and promoting healthy development. We stress the need to restructure current policy and practice to enable development of a comprehensive and cohesive approach that is an essential and primary component of school reform, without which many students cannot benefit from instructional reforms and thus achievement scores will not rise in the way current accountability pressures demand.

1.The other national center, called the Center for School Mental Health, is located at the University of Maryland at Baltimore and is directed by Mark Weist. Both Centers are partially supported by the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services through the Office of Adolescent Health, Maternal and Child Health Bureau (Title V, Social Security Act), Health Resources and Services Administration, with co-funding from the Center for Mental Health Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The following links provide more information about mental health in schools.

Mental Health in Schools: Guidelines, Models, Resources & Policy Considerations

H.S. Adelman, & L. Taylor (2002). Impediments to Enhancing Availability of Mental Health Services in Schools: Fragmentation, Overspecialization, Counterproductive Competition, and Marginalization.Paper commissioned by the National Association of School Psychologists and the ERIC Clearinghouse on Counseling and Student Services (ERIC/CASS).

Youngsters' Mental Health and Psychosocial Problems: What are the Data?

Mental Health in Schools - A Sampling of References (from the Center's Quick Find Collection)

Links to Annotated Lists of Empirically Supported/ Evidence-Based Interventions for School-Aged Children and Adolescents

Addressing Barriers to Learning: A Comprehensive Approach to Mental Health in Schools

New Directions for School & Community Initiatives to Address Barriers to Learning: Two Examples of Concept Papers to Inform and Guide Policy Makers.

H.S. Adelman, & L. Taylor (2002). Guide 7: Fostering School, Family, and Community Involvement. Guidebook in series, Safe and Secure: Guides to Creating Safer Schools.Developed by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.

Recommendations to the President's New Freedom Commission on Mental Health

More information about our Center and the work we do.

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UCLA School Mental Health Project /
Center for Mental Health in Schools
WebMaster: Perry Nelson (smhp@ucla.edu)

Why mental health in schools?	It is, of course, not a new insight that physical and mental health concerns must be addressed if schools are to function satisfactorily and students are to succeed at school. It has long been acknowledged that a variety of psychosocial and health problems affect learning and performance in profound ways. Such problems are exacerbated as youngsters internalize the debilitating effects of performing poorly at school and are punished for the misbehavior that is a common correlate of school failure. Because of all this, school policy makers, have a lengthy (albeit somewhat reluctant) history of trying to assist teachers in dealing with problems that interfere with schooling. Prominent examples are seen in the range of counseling, psychological, and social service programs schools provide.
	Adding to what school education support staff do, there has been renewed emphasis over the past 20 years in the health and social services arenas on increasing linkages between schools and community service agencies to enhance the well-being of young people and their families. This "school-linked services" agenda has added impetus to advocacy for mental health in schools. xMore recently, the efforts of some advocates for school-linked services has merged with forces working to enhance initiatives for community schools, youth development, and the preparation of healthy and productive citizens and workers. The merger has expanded interest in social-emotional learning and protective factors as avenues to increase students' assets and resiliency and reduce risk factors. Thus, varied policies and initiatives have emerged relevant to efforts to enhance mental health in schools. Some directly support school programs and personnel; others connect community programs and personnel with schools. As a result, most schools have some programs to address a range of mental health and psychosocial concerns (e.g., school adjustment and attendance problems, dropouts, physical and sexual abuse, substance abuse, relationship difficulties, emotional upset, delinquency, violence.)
	School-based and school-linked programs have been developed for purposes of early intervention, crisis intervention and prevention, treatment, and promotion of positive social and emotional development. And, available research suggests that for some youngsters schools are the main providers of mental health services. As Burns and her colleagues report from the study of children's utilization of MH services in western North Carolina, "the major player in the de facto system of care was the education sector more than three-fourths of children receiving mental health services were seen in the education sector, and for many this was the sole source of care."
Advancing mental health in schools	Clearly, mental health activity is going on in schools. Equally evident, there is a great deal to be done to improve what is taking place. The current norm related to efforts to advance mental health policy is for a vast sea of advocates to compete for the same dwindling resources. This includes advocates representing different professional practitioner groups. Naturally, all such advocates want to advance their agenda. And, to do so, the temptation usually is to keep the agenda problem-focused and rather specific and narrow. Politically, this make some sense. But in the long-run, it may be counterproductive in that it fosters piecemeal, fragmented, and redundant policies and practices. Diverse school and community resources are attempting to address complex, multifaceted, and overlapping psychosocial and mental health concerns in highly fragmented and marginalized ways. This has led to redundancy, inappropriate competition, and inadequate results. One response to this state of affairs is seen in the calls for realigning policy and practice around a cohesive framework based on well-conceived models and the best available scholarship. With specific respect to mental health in schools, it has been stressed that initiatives must connect in major ways with the mission of schools and integrate with a restructured system of education support programs and services.
	From our perspective, it is time to take a close look at all the pieces. To date, there has been no comprehensive mapping and no overall analysis of the amount of resources used for efforts relevant to mental health in schools or of how they are expended. Without such a "big picture" analysis, policymakers and practitioners are deprived of information that is essential in determining equity and enhancing system effectiveness. The challenge for those focused on mental health in schools is not only to understand the basic concerns hampering the field, but to function on the cutting edge of change so that the concerns are effectively addressed. Systemic changes must weave school owned resources and community owned resources together to develop comprehensive, multifaceted, and integrated approaches for addressing barriers to learning and enhancing healthy development. Moreover, pursuit of such changes also must address complications stemming from the scale of public education in the U.S.A. Currently, there are about 90,000 public schools in about 15,000 districts. Thus, efforts to advance mental health in schools also must adopt effective models and procedures for replication and "scale-up."
Needed: Strategic approaches & comprehensive frameworks to enhance policy & practice	Although efforts to advance mental health in schools often are hampered by competing initiatives and agendas, the diversity of initiatives has laid a foundation that can be built upon. There is a need, however, for increased emphasis on strategic approaches for enhancing policy and practice. Such strategic approaches can be fostered through efforts to unify thinking about mental health in schools, adoption of well-conceived guiding frameworks, and by support for development of focused networking. To these ends, the Center for Mental Health in Schools at UCLA (1) highlights the need for a broad perspective in thinking about and justifying "mental health" in schools, (2) promotes a working draft of comprehensive and multifaceted guidelines that provide a basis for operationally defining mental health in schools, (3) proposes an integrated framework for promoting healthy development and addressing barriers to learning at a school site in ways that can expand the impact of mental health in schools, and (4) pursues a wide variety of strategies designed to advance the field.
Ending the marginalization	Clearly, enhancing mental health in schools in comprehensive ways is not an easy task. Indeed, it is likely to remain an insurmountable task until school reformers accept the reality that such activity is essential and does not represent an agenda separate from a school's instructional mission. For this to happen, we must encourage them to view the difficulty of raising achievement test scores through the complementary lenses of addressing barriers to learning and promoting healthy development. When this is done, it is more likely that mental health in schools will be understood as essential to addressing barriers to learning and not as an agenda separate from a school's instructional mission.
	Then, we must show how all policy, practice, and research related to mental health in schools, including the many categorical programs funded to deal with designated problems, can be woven into a cohesive continuum of interventions and integrated thoroughly with school reform efforts. In the process, we will need to stress the importance of school-community-home collaborations in weaving together the resources for comprehensive, multifaceted approaches. In sum, advancing mental health in schools is about much more than expanding services and creating full service schools. It is about establishing comprehensive, multifaceted approaches that help ensure schools are caring and supportive places that maximize learning and well-being and strengthen students, families, schools, and neighborhoods.