Using Universal Screening to Monitor Students’ Social, Emotional, and Behavioral Health

As many youths will display symptoms of social-emotional or behavioral (SEB) health concerns during their childhood or adolescence, schools are called upon to provide supports to students who have demonstrated barriers to learning. Universal screening has been identified as one strategy to enhance the accurate identification of students struggling with SEB concerns. Universal screening measures take on a variety of formats but often include some type of brief behavior rating completed by a teacher, parent, or student to assess individual student functioning. The current chapter provides an overview of universal screening for SEB concerns. Available screening measures are reviewed, along with the psychometric evidence supporting each measure (e.g., validity, reliability, diagnostic accuracy). Procedural considerations are examined, including administration frequency and duration, screening informant selection, and parental consent protocols. Finally, a procedural framework is provided that outlines how to link screening results to evidence-based interventions.

Implementing Statewide Practices That Promote Student Wellness and Resilience

Wellness and resilience promotion efforts are often an underutilized opportunity to address the mental health needs of children and youth. Organizations and individuals with state-level reach are ideally poised to develop and disseminate infrastructure, training, and resources to support wellness and resilience promotion efforts. This chapter highlights 8 key systems and practices that can inform and support such statewide efforts. Examples within Ohio, a recipient of 2 federal grants to support behavioral and mental health promotion, are used to illustrate the eight systems and practices. The chapter incorporates recommendations for others seeking to promote wellness and resilience in their respective contexts.

Preventing Bullying in Schools

Bullying is a problem that can impact perpetrators, victims, and bystanders in terms of their mental illness and mental wellness. In this chapter, the authors first define bullying and summarize its impact. The emphasis of the chapter is on universal and targeted prevention of bullying in schools following a public health framework. The authors provide evidence for the effectiveness of bullying prevention programs and policies, as well as universal and targeted prevention approaches to teach and reinforce positive behavior and social-emotional skills. Targeted approaches for perpetrators and victims of bullying are described. These concepts are illustrated in a case study of a school district’s comprehensive approach to bullying prevention and intervention. The chapter concludes with a table of recommendations for practice.

Promoting Physical Activity, Nutrition, and Sleep

Children’s physical and mental health are impacted by keystone behaviors including eating, physical activity, and sleep. Schools represent a critical venue for health promotion, and school-based mental health professionals possess the knowledge and skills to implement prevention and intervention strategies while also guarding against unhealthy weight control behaviors. This chapter discusses strategies for promoting physical activity and healthy eating in schools, as well as approaches for promoting sufficient sleep. There is an emphasis on universal (i.e., Tier 1) strategies with some attention devoted to targeted (i.e., Tier 2) approaches. Two important themes in this chapter include (a) the importance of systems level changes that appropriately recognize that factors outside children’s control impact their ability to engage in healthy behaviors and (b) the value of family–school partnerships to promote physical activity, healthy eating, and sufficient sleep.

Creating Resilient Classrooms and Schools

This chapter describes the Resilient Classrooms protocol for fostering classroom environments that promote students’ emotional well-being and academic success. Descriptions relate key elements of developmental resilience research to the 4 Resilient Classrooms steps: collecting student surveys describing relationships and support for self-agency in the classroom; consulting with students and colleagues to make sense of the survey data; creating and carrying out a plan to modify classroom routines and practices to strengthen supports for resilience; and re-administering the surveys to assess the impact of the plan. An example of a Resilient Classrooms project in Beijing, China, illustrates the acceptability and viability of the Resilient Classrooms protocol in other cultures.

Preventing School Violence and Advancing School Safety

Schools are one of the safest places for young people, but high-profile cases of school shootings have driven schools to engage in reactive practices such as expensive security measures and zero tolerance discipline that have had unintended negative effects. More proactive practices are needed to prevent violence, with particular attention to the commonplace types of aggression such as bullying and harassment that have serious consequences for students and can be the seedbeds for more severe violence. Overall, schools should place greater emphasis on multitiered prevention strategies that build a school climate characterized by high academic and behavioral expectations for students in the context of supportive relationships. Schools should also adopt threat assessment as a systematic approach to evaluating and helping troubled students. The overarching idea is that making schools safe and supportive environments that foster student well-being and achievement is vital for the prevention of violence.

Promoting School Safety, School Climate, and Student Mental Health

The reduction of school violence requires a coordinated effort that enhances school climate and improves the sense of safety on campus. This chapter addresses the related topics of school violence, school safety, and school climate; provides an overview of the interactions among these constructs; and illustrates how they are directly linked to student mental and emotional well-being. A multidisciplinary approach is described that addresses these constructs, which are grounded in a school safety model that provides a foundation to promote students’ mental health. The process for moving toward action includes selecting an appropriate model for organizing intervention efforts, building a multidisciplinary team, developing a plan for assessment, and creating a systematic process for intervention implementation. Finally, a case study is provided to illustrate how a school district can interpret and implement these key components in the real world.

Framing School Mental Health Services Within a Dual-Factor Model of Mental Health

This chapter proposes a reimagined dual-factor, multitiered system of support (MTSS) that targets students’ complete mental health by simultaneously diminishing symptoms of mental disorders and enhancing attributes of well-being. Examples of assessments and interventions are cited to show that our existing knowledge base includes examples of universal screening, progress monitoring, and interventions that address complete mental health. An argument is made for more research to build a broader base of assessments of well-being for progress monitoring and universal screening and to develop and field test decision-making protocols to identify students’ complete mental health needs and align services with these needs. The chapter concludes that important first steps toward dual-factor MTSS have already been taken.

Introduction

In this introduction, the authors discuss the purpose of this book, which is (a) to provide school-based mental health professionals with the knowledge and tools to help promote students’ emotional well-being and mental health, (b) to describe how to implement new models of mental health service delivery in schools, and (c) to prescribe practical strategies that bolster the likelihood that our youth will thrive in school and in life. The authors recommend conceptualizing student mental health through a dual-factor model that encompasses both promoting wellness and reducing pathology. They advocate for a change in educational priorities—one that supports the whole child, in mind, body, and spirit. They then discuss the prevalence of psychological distress in youth, risk and resilience research, the dual-factor model of mental health, happiness studies, new frameworks for the delivery of services, and the organization and structure of the text.

Afterword

In this afterword, the authors emphasize that all school-based mental health providers must be advocates for the emotional well-being of our youth. They emphasize that advocates are made, not born, and discuss specific knowledge and skills necessary for effective advocacy. They then discuss three top advocacy priorities: (a) increasing the number of mental health professionals in the schools; (b) promoting programs, policies, training, and research that supports the emotional well-being of youth; and (c) supporting models, frameworks, and positions developed by the National Association of School Psychologists, the American Psychological Association, and many other mental health associations that support children’s needs. In closing, they discuss how to be advocates for all children and, most important, our most vulnerable student populations at the personal, local (including school), state, national, and international levels.