Dr. McGinnis-Smith earned a PhD in special education with emphasis in EBD at the University of Iowa and an administrator certification from Drake University. She is coauthor of the social skills teaching series "Skillstreaming." She also coauthored with Richard Simpson "Skillstreaming Children and Youth with High Functioning Autism…

Student mental health problems often emerge in high school; however, such problems frequently go unaddressed. Using a time series design, we evaluated the effects of the Strong Teens social-emotional learning curriculum implemented by three school counselors and two school social workers with 28 high school students identified with internalizing…

There is a growing emphasis in U.S. schools to focus on the social-emotional issues of rural students. Specifically, the effect of mental health issues on school success underscores the importance of collaboration between, and among, educators and specialized support personnel (SSP; e.g., school counselors). In rural areas, school counselors and…

Volumes 22 and 23 of the "Advances in Special Education" address the current top perspectives and issues in the field of emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) by providing chapters written by active researchers and scholarly university professors who specialize in this area. Volume 22 first delineates legal issues, themes, and…

Philosophical and psychological opinion is divided over whether moral sensitivity, understood as the ability to pick out a situation's morally salient features, necessarily involves emotional engagement. This paper seeks to offer insight into this question. It reasons that if moral sensitivity does draw significantly on affective capacities of…

This study identifies essential program elements for Whatcom Discovery Center, a Northwest Educational Service District cooperative program providing academic and social/emotional development services to students who are challenged with severe social/emotional and/or chronic mental health disorders. The seven (7) Superintendents and seven (7)…

The relationship between mental illness and the practice of naming a son after the father was investigated. Plank and Cameron suggested that individuals who carry their father's name often live under the father's shadow, and this might influence the social/emotional development of the individual. Previous reports of rates of mental illness among…

The science of early development and our understanding of the impact of early experience on later social, emotional, and cognitive development has grown dramatically in the past three decades. Because the data are compelling and far-reaching, there has been increasing interest and concern about the quality of the infant's earliest experiences, and…

This paper discusses the results of a study that investigated the validity and reliability of the Ecology Rating Scale (ERS). The ERS is a brief, multi-dimensional level-of-functioning instrument that can be rated by parents or clinicians. The ERS is comprised of seven domains of youth functioning: family, school, emotional, legal/justice,…

This paper discusses the outcomes of a study that examined Hans Eysenck's antisocial behavioral hypothesis (ASB). Eysenck's theory of personality has three temperament-based traits: Psychoticism (P), Extraversion (E), and Neuroticism (N). His ASB hypothesis predicts that individuals high on P, E, and N with poor socialization are at the greatest…

This collection of papers presented at a 1996 conference on children's mental health focuses on school-based services. The eight papers have the following titles and authors: (1) "Facilitating the Social/Emotional Development of Middle School Students: A Model for Improving School-Based Curriculum" (Craig Barringer and Doug Cheney); (2)…

This important volume comprehensively explores the development of psychiatric disorders in 2- to 6-year-olds, detailing how the growing empirical knowledge base may lead to improved interventions for young children and their families. Leading contributors examine advances in the conceptualization and diagnosis of early-onset disruptive disorders,…

This text presents 13 chapters on the assessment of students with emotional and/or behavioral disorders for the purpose of making educational placement and programming decisions consistent with federal and state diagnostic guidelines. Chapters are grouped into four sections focusing on: basic considerations for assessment of youth in this…