Universal Prevention to Support Children's Mental Health in Schools

Resumen de los autores

As documented in chapters throughout this book, many promising and well-established interventions have been developed for treating even the most burdensome and debilitating mental health problems experienced by youth. Two overlapping realities, however, can interfere with the success of these interventions: (1) schools and communities rarely have enough resources to identify and provide intensive services for the large number of youth who experience severe emotional and behavioral problems; and (2) many youth who would benefit from early interventions to reduce risk go unnoticed and do not receive any services at all (see Herman, Merrill, Reinke, & Tucker, 2004; Reinke, Herman, & Tucker, 2006). It is exciting to have strategies that can help individuals overcome mental health problems. Without a broader approach, however, individual or group interventions will not impact the population health or reduce the incidence or prevalence of these conditions (Biglan, 1995). A public health approach provides a framework for influencing population health outcomes (Reinke et al., 2006). Although elements of a public health framework applied to children's mental health--including the idea of conceptualizing health promotion, prevention, and treatment along a continuum--have appeared in several prominent reports (National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine; NRC & IOM, 2000; 2004; 2009), the application of fully integrated models remains challenging. In particular, universal approaches to mental health promotion and prevention are often foreign to mental health providers who have been trained to deliver services to individuals or small groups. In this chapter, we define universal prevention and situate it within a public health perspective. Next, we describe how this approach fits along a continuum of supports for students, ranging from minimal to intensive services, and show how this framework not only can reduce the number of students who will need intensive supports but also can help identify those most in need. We then describe examples of universal prevention models in school settings. We conclude with a discussion of barriers to universal prevention, potential solutions, and future directions.

Áreas y palabras clave

Cómo citar (APA 7)

Herman, K. C., Reinke, W. M., Thompson, A. M., & Faloughi, R. (2016). Universal Prevention to Support Children's Mental Health in Schools. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED626369