The FRIENDS Resilience programs provide cognitive-behavioral skills across the developmental spectrum and can be applied as a universal or selective prevention program. In the current study, we assessed whether, relative to the schools' existing counseling curriculum ("guidance"), FRIENDS improved social skills, problem behaviors, and…

School-based day treatment is an intensive mental health service for children with social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties. Research on day treatment is scarce and descriptions of program models are lacking. We used stimulated recall interviews to explore the moment-to-moment processes and strategies of classroom staff in a day treatment…

In the fall of 2021, Redwood City School District (RCSD) placed a full-time, district-employed mental health counselor in each of its twelve schools in order to bolster district capacity to support student mental health and wellbeing. Stanford's John W. Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities (Gardner Center) conducted a Year 1…

The focus of this report is on mental health interventions delivered in K-12 neighborhood public schools. A vast array of commercially available programs, conceptual frameworks, and approaches to school-based mental health are not unanimously recommended, applied, or agreed upon. This poses a challenge to any comprehensive description or…

As the nation transitions from responding to the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to navigating its ongoing impact on youth and their communities, K-12 students continue to experience mental health and wellbeing challenges. In the fall of 2021, Redwood City School District (RCSD) placed a full-time, district-employed mental health counselor in each…

This poll was conducted between April 26-May 6, 2023 among a sample of 961 Teachers. The interviews were conducted online. Results based on the full survey have a measure of precision of plus or minus 3.46 percentage points. Among the key findings are: (1) Private school and charter school teachers say they are thriving to a much higher degree…

The success of universal screening for effective school mental health programs is dependent on the availability of usable measures as well as empirically based recommendations for use. The current study examined the long-term stability of a strengths-based social-emotional screening tool, the Devereux Student Strengths Assessment-Mini…

Starting Strong in Kindergarten (Starting Strong) is a school-based indicated prevention targeting behavior problems, student-teacher relationships, and parent-school connectedness for children with or at risk for disruptive behavior problems during the transition to kindergarten. By use of a block-randomized, controlled trial to test program…

We sought to identify which kindergarten children are simultaneously at risk of moderate or severe symptomatology in both attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and conduct disorder (CD) as adolescents. These risk factor estimates have not been previously available. We conducted multinomial logistic regression analyses of multiinformant…

We present the results of an evaluation of the implementation and short-term effects of "Zippy's Friends," a school-based 24-week mental health promotion program to teach children coping skills. The evaluation was conducted in Denmark (322 children in 17 first grade classes) and Lithuania (314 children in 16 kindergartens classes) with…

University-community partnerships are widely recognized as critical to the success of community research and advocacy work but difficult to form and sustain. This article will describe a unique facet of that partnership, namely the collaboration between mental health clinicians and community consultants, a partnership that our data suggest was a…

Objective: To examine the relative contributions of symptom severity, functional impairment, and parental burden in predicting the use of specialist child mental health services over a 4-year period. Method: Between 1999 and 2000, parental Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaires were completed on a community-based sample of 1,168 (40% response…

As the field of mental health services shifts its focus to early intervention, the need to develop valid and reliable measures of young children's behavioral functioning is clear. Traditional assessment instruments have focused on deficits, problems, and pathologies to the exclusion of strengths and competencies. However, assessing child strengths…