Holistic and ecological approaches to mental health support have been identified by many as best-practice approaches for creating and sustaining well-being. Those who experience mental health challenges including, for example, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), often struggle to find adequate, sustainable and ongoing care from clinical…

The California Department of Education's Project Cal-Well aims to promote awareness of student mental health and improve access to mental health services for youth, families, and school communities. This brief introduces a series of Project Cal-Well Legacy Briefs that highlight successes achieved by Project Cal-Well partners. WestEd developed the…

Investing in school mental health programs has the potential to improve youths' access to mental health services. Barriers to the implementation of school mental health programs include limited workforce capacity, competing priorities, and lack of coordinated care. The current paper describes the history, development, and key components of the…

As the youth mental health crisis continues to worsen, there is a need for more evidence-based social-emotional interventions that can be applied in schools -- the setting in which youth are most likely to seek and receive mental health treatment (Simon et al., 2015). Further, exploring ways to culturally adapt interventions for marginalized…

There has been an increase in school mental health research aimed at producing generalizable knowledge to address longstanding science-to-practice gaps to increase children's access to evidence-based mental health services. Successful dissemination and implementation are both important pieces to address science-to-practice gaps, but there is…

In this article the authors advocate for a culturally responsible dual-factor model for the delivery of mental health services in the schools. This case is made because too many children are not receiving the mental health care they need in order to succeed in school and life. This is especially true for Black, Indigenous, children of color, and…

Perceptions teachers have regarding their students are associated with their students' school performance. Similarly, students' psychoeducational and psychosocial functioning are partly shaped by their beliefs about teachers' opinions of them. Psychoeducational performance and psychosocial interactions are linked with perceived stereotype threats.…

This paper describes a school-based mental health model for identifying, intervening, and referring students who are at risk for, or are exhibiting, mental health problems. This paper describes the County Schools Mental Health Coalition as a model for improving mental health outcomes for youth. The County Schools Mental Health Coalition, referred…

There is an urgent need for leadership skills when facilitating communication and engendering acceptance and respect among people from culturally different backgrounds, opposing viewpoints, and vastly different experiences. Thus, when facilitating intercultural group dialogs, varying institutions, agencies, and businesses need culturally competent…

Recent health care reform provides many new opportunities to expand mental health and behavioral support to students in schools and school-community partnerships. Through newly available funding sources, as well as expanded legislative initiatives, school psychologists can advocate for and become leaders in delivering universal programming, tiered…

As the population of immigrant Latino students continues to rise, school psychologists serving Latino children and families must develop the knowledge and skills necessary to provide high-quality psychological services to culturally and linguistically diverse students from immigrant families. Following a review of the relevant literature on the…

On average, natural disasters directly impact approximately 160 million individuals and cause 90,000 deaths each year. As natural disasters are becoming more familiar, it stands to reason that school personnel, particularly mental health professionals, need to know how to prepare for natural disasters. Current disaster preparation and response…

Migrant and seasonal farmworkers are typically Spanish-speaking, Latino immigrants with limited formal education and low literacy skills and, as such, are a vulnerable population. We describe the development of the "Pesticides and Farmworker Health Toolkit", a pesticide safety and health curriculum designed to communicate to farmworkers…

Over the past 70 years a legend has evolved that the first college health program in the United States was established at Amherst College in 1861. Although the program at Amherst was innovative in its day and served as a model for the field of college health, several other institutions prior to 1860 appropriated funds, hired staff, and established…

The authors discuss the challenges that researchers from university and community systems face in gaining access to and partnering with K-12 school systems to conduct research. Borrowing from Szapocznik, Hervis, and Schwartz's (2003) brief strategic family theory and therapy and Bronfenbrenner's (1979, 1986) ecological systems theory, the authors…