Drama therapy is an emerging mental health practice in North American schools. Yet little research has focused directly on the role of drama therapists in schools or their service navigation practices and challenges. From February to July of 2018, drama therapists affiliated with the North American Drama Therapy Association currently working in…

Numerous evidence-based programs (EBPs) exist for delivery in schools to promote youth mental health outcomes. However, school systems often lack the internal infrastructure to support the effective implementation and sustainment of EBPs when external supports are withdrawn, resulting in notable attenuation in the benefits in youth clinical…

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…

Adolescents in the United States are in a mental health crisis. It is estimated that more than 20% of children ages nine to 17 struggle with behavioral, emotional, and social problems and mental health disorders such as anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1999). Mental health…

Children in rural settings are less likely to receive mental health services than their urban and suburban counterparts and even less likely to receive evidence-based care. Rural schools could address the need for mental health interventions by using evidence-based practices within a tiered system of supports such as positive behavioral…

Evidence-based practice is foundational to school psychology; as a field, we have contributed a great deal of evidence for specific practices. However, school psychologists must continue to find ways to more effectively reduce the gap between research and practice, supporting educational outcomes for all students. Two interconnected strategies…

School-based mental health clinics are the ideal venue to provide mental health services for youth due to their accessibility and lack of stigma compared with other community treatment centers. There were challenges associated with the abrupt shift to remote education and clinic services caused by COVID-19, but some school-based mental health…

Programming aimed at promoting positive student mental health and reducing or preventing mental-ill health is common within schools in Ontario. A brief, valid, and scalable measure was needed to assess the organizational conditions, or the capacity, readiness, and resources of schools to successfully implement and sustain this programming. In…

Emerging literature has highlighted the importance of discerning general and strategic organizational context (OC) factors (e.g., leadership and climate) and their interaction effect on individual implementation behaviors (e.g., attitudes toward evidence-based practices; EBPs) in youth mental healthcare. This study aimed to examine how leadership…

This manuscript provides a detailed examination of comprehensive school-based dialectical behavior therapy (CSB-DBT) as a critical component to the DBT services continuum provided in schools. Because suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents along with increased prevalence of self-harming behavior, schools often find…

Background: Strategic implementation leadership is a critical determinant of successful implementation, hypothesized to create a more supportive implementation climate conducive to the adoption and use of evidence-based practices. Implementation leadership behaviors may vary significantly across contexts, necessitating studies that examine the…

Behavioral health practitioners recognize how critical the process of implementation is to the successful use of evidence-based practices. It is further recognized that implementation is a complex, time-consuming process and that successful implementation often occurs in stages. Capitalizing on a national evaluation examining the implementation of…

The success of school-based mental health interventions is often inconsistent, in part due to lack of input from teachers and students in the programme design. Therefore, the involvement and engagement of teachers in the co-production of an intervention, especially within data analysis, can create more innovative and effective solutions. This…

Meeting the needs of gifted students is particularly challenging for school counselors. This practitioner action research study examined the effectiveness of implementing complete universal mental health screening with early college high school students. Using a complete mental health approach, we classified students into need-based groups. The…

Background: Implementation strategies used to enhance the implementation of interventions during efficacy and effectiveness studies are rarely reported. Tracking and reporting implementation strategies during these phases has potential to improve future research studies and real-world implementation. We present an exemplar of how this might be…