A research review reported in the July 2019 issue of the Journal of Adolescence found that "Greater density of same race/ethnic peers led to better mental health for all youth" and that ".No overall mental health advantage in schools with increased diversity was found."A range of mental health outcomes were assessed (e.g., internalizing behaviors, psychotic symptoms) in order to broadly capture the relationship between school context on mental health and psychological wellbeing. Methods: A search across six databases from 1990 to 2018 resulted in 13 articles from three countries (United States, United Kingdom, and the Netherlands) that met inclusion criteria following a two step review of titles/abstracts and full-text." Read more....
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Comprehensive School Guidance programs enable counsellors and schools to address health and social issues in a holistic, integrated way. An article in Issue #1m 2919 of Professional School Counseling describes how the CSG approach can be used to prevent suicide. The researchers propose "a common standard for the development of an effective, comprehensive school suicide prevention program using a five-step process and frame these approaches within the American School Counselor Association National Model. Read more...
Most of the research and discussion about school mental health has focused on prevention and early identification of students experiencing difficulties. An articles in Issue #8, 2017 of Psychology in the Schools reminds us about the important role that schools can play in supporting students when they return to school after a crisis. "This paper presents results of a study examining a school-based support program model designed to provide short-term academic, social, and emotional support to help students successfully reacclimatize to school after an extended absence. The paper describes demographic, academic, and clinical characteristics of 189 program participants across eight high schools. Improvements were observed in participants’ day-to-day functioning based on the results of pre/postassessments completed by program clinicians. Preliminary data showed positive trends in participants’ school attendance and high school graduation rates. Finally, the paper considers implications for school-based mental health practice and next steps in related research. Read more...
(This item is among the 5-10 highlights posted for ISHN members each week from the ISHN Member information service. Click on the web link to join this service and to support ISHN) The articles in Issue #3, 2016 of Canadian Journal of School Psychology present a provincial/territorial snapshot of the practice of school psychology across Canada. The introduction notes that "Some provinces also report on the rise of a decentralized clinical administration where the provision of public sector health and social welfare services are increasingly linked to the education system, by recognizing that children are best served in their natural environments. Fundamentally, bridging the gap between “Education” and “Health” is an emerging theme in the present issue given that it represents the most challenging barrier to the implementation of prevention and early intervention programs. The “Global School Health Statement,” (a global dialogue promoted by ASCD, EI and ISHN) which for all intent and purposes, aims for the Integration of Health and Education and recognizes that schools have always “played an important role in promoting the health, safety, welfare, and social development of children.” Similarly, as suggested by Louise Bradley, the Mental Health Commission of Canada CEO, “in order to give today’s young people the best chance, we need to build a bridge—a bridge supported by an integrated, accessible and responsive system.” To date, there is little comprehensive mapping available in Canada of the amount of resources required for the implementation of mental health service provision in schools or of how they should be expended. Efforts to advance mental health in schools have been hampered by the existing gap between Health and Education. As such, by adhering to the “Global School Health Statement” guiding frameworks, school psychologists now seek to find innovative means to integrate health and social programs, which includes mental health, within the education system." Read more >> (This item is among the 5-10 highlights posted for ISHN members each week from the ISHN Member information service. Click on the web link to join this service and to support ISHN)
A data review done in Issue #8, 2016 of Psychology in Schools reports on the significant impact that divorce or father's death has on high school completion of the children. Bereavement and divorse are not among the highly covered topics in many health-personal-social development curricula. "Associations between parental loss and high school (HS) completion were examined in data drawn from 1,761 male and 1,689 female offspring born in wedlock to mothers participating in a nationally representative study. Multiple logistic regression models were conducted predicting HS completion by age 19 among offspring whose parents divorced or father died, compared to offspring of continuously married parents. Models were estimated without and with adjustment for correlated sociodemographic characteristics, including maternal education and age at first childbirth and offspring age at last assessment and race/ethnicity. In unadjusted models, parental divorce predicted a 41% decreased odds of HS completion for males, and paternal death predicted a 79% decreased odds of HS completion for females." In other words, even taking when discounting the economic impacts, the completion rate dropped by almost one-half for males due to divorce and by almost three-quarters for females for the death of their father. This study underlines the need for a full scope family studies program in schools. Read more >> (This item is among the 5-10 highlights posted for ISHN members each week from the ISHN Member information service. Click on the web link to join this service and to support ISHN)
A news story out of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada has reminded us about the need to monitor wait times as part of the school health/other services component of a comprehensive approach to school health promotion. The story notes that only 41% of young people in Edmonton received mental health treatment within 30 days after referral. The details of the report are important " according to the latest numbers from Alberta Health Services. The Performance Measure Update shows that for the three-month period between April and June of this year, only 41 per cent of children in the Edmonton zone needing mental health treatment received it within 30 days of a referral.That's down sharply from the same period in 2015, when 94 per cent of children in the Edmonton area saw a therapist within 30 days." But more importantly, this trend was noted and discussed intelligently, with representatives of the local hospital and school board responding with more staff being assigned and the roll-out of a Mental Health First Aid course for teachers that will help with early identification. Because this is part of the Alberta health ministry monitoring plan, comparisons were possible over time and with similar cities in the province. In other words, this is a good example of how a monitoring system should work. Read more>>
(This item is among the 5-10 highlights posted for ISHN members each week from the ISHN Member information service. Click on the web link to join this service and to support ISHN) A Data Review in the August issue of The Lancet Psychiatry provides a statistical portrait of suicides among young people in England. "We collected information about antecedents considered to be relevant to suicide (eg, abuse, bullying, bereavement, academic pressures, self-harm, and physical health) from a range of investigations and inquiries, including coroner inquest hearings, child death investigations, criminal justice system reports, and the National Health Service, including data on people in contact with mental health services in the 12 months before their death. 145 suicides in people younger than 20 years were notified to us during the study period, of which we were able to obtain report data about antecedents for 130 (90%). The number of suicides rose sharply during the late teens with 79 deaths by suicide in people aged 18–19 years compared with 66 in people younger than 18 years. 102 (70%) deaths were in males. 92 (63%) deaths were by hanging. Various antecedents were reported among the individuals for whom we had report data, including academic (especially exam) pressures (35 [27%] individuals), bullying (28 [22%]), bereavement (36 [28%]), suicide in family or friends (17 [13%]), physical health conditions (47 [36%]), family problems (44 [34%]), social isolation or withdrawal (33 [25%]), child abuse or neglect (20 [15%]), excessive drinking (34 [26%]), and illicit drug use (38 [29%]). Suicide-related internet use was recorded in 30 (23%) cases. In the week before death 13 (10%) individuals had self-harmed and 35 (27%) had expressed suicidal ideas. 56 (43%) individuals had no known contact with health-care and social-care services or justice agencies. Improved services for self-harm and mental health are crucial but the wide range of antecedents emphasises the roles of schools, primary care, social services, and the youth justice system." Read More>>
(This item is among the 5-10 highlights posted for ISHN members each week from the ISHN Member information service. Click on the web link to join this service and to support ISHN) GSHS Survey Analysis: Varied Parent Involvement & Adolescent Mental Health in Low Resource Countries8/19/2016 An analysis of the Global School-based Health Survey (GSHS) data in six sub-Saharan African countries shows that parental involvement in their schooling was correlated with higher levels of mental health. "This study examined the correlation between parental involvement and SSA adolescent mental health. About 15,000 adolescents aged 11–17 from six SSA countries participated in the Global School-Based Health Surveys (2003–2007). Based on the findings, low parental involvement was observed. Binomial regression analysis showed that the strength and direction of the relationship between parental involvement and mental health varied across countries. These findings may indicate the need for more intense mental health intervention efforts including the collaboration of professionals, policy-makers, and parents to guide future child and adolescent mental health services. Read More >>
(This item is among the 5-10 highlights posted for ISHN members each week from the ISHN Member information service. Click on the web link to join this service and to support ISHN) This blog continues to suggest a new approach to school health promotion and social development that does not dump the responsibilities of other professionals on teachers because of scarce resources in those other sectors. An editorial in Issue #3, 2015 of Social Work Research is an example of this trend to always view the teacher as a resource for a function that should be carried out by others. In this case, it is the function of securing mental health services for students, a task that should be assigned to school social workers, school psychologists or school nurses. "...it would be appropriate to discuss another challenge for urban schools, to better serve the unmet behavioral health needs of African American students. Teachers are an untapped resource in addressing the unmet mental health services needs of inner-city African American children. They often have the primary responsibility for identifying mental disorders in children and bridging students with problems to needed services. What are the factors associated with teachers' decisions to refer or not refer African American children for mental health services? What are the relationships between organizational factors, community factors, teachers' knowledge, and teachers' decisions for services referral? And what are the pathways to services for African American children? Increased scholarship investigating these relationships as another variable for interventions to effectively affect services for African American students is very important." There is no debate about the unmet need and even about the teachers role in identifying and refering students. The debate is about asking teachers to walk down the complicated and poorly funded "pathways" to securing the service. Ironically, an article in the same issue explored the use of social workers as such navigators and concluded that they were being under-used. Read more >> (An item from the ISHN Member information service)
(An item from the ISHN Member information service) Many of the national and provincial mental health strategies announced in recent years have included schools as a primary component, with teachers being critical, especially their "mental health literacy". An article in Issue #3, 2015 of School Mental Health reports on a small scale study that describes teacher perceptions of their role(s). It is noteworthy that teacher competence in MH is only one of the six factors identified as barriers by teachers. "This paper explores the teacher role in inter-professional collaboration in mental health promotion and identifies teachers’ perceived challenges to collaborative work in this field. Data are derived from a mixed method design, with three focus group interviews (n = 15) and survey research (n = 771) conducted with Norwegian K-12 teachers. The findings show that teachers perceive their gatekeeping role to be prominent, in that they are front line professionals to identify students’ mental health problems and, if necessary, make referrals to mental health services. However, teachers realize that mental health promotion encompasses more than the assessment of difficulties, and they call for more support and information through inter-professional collaboration in order to extend their engagement in student mental health beyond the gatekeeping role. Based on this, six main challenges to inter-professional collaboration are identified. These are the challenges of: (1) communication and confidentiality, (2) time constraints, (3) contextual presence and understanding, (4) cross-systems contact, (5) school leadership and (6) teacher competence in mental health." Read more>>
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