Mark D Weist

University of South Carolina | USC · Department of Psychology

Provides an introduction to this section of the book focused on enhancing stakeholder engagement, collaboration, and family-school-community partnerships in school mental health (SMH). Ideas and strategies from eight chapters in this section are discussed with connections to two overarching themes of Systems Analysis and Change, and Developing Comm...

While research in specific academic disciplines has individually advanced knowledge and practice for promoting multiple aspects of health and well-being in children and adolescents, still missing is an understanding of the interconnectedness of many critical aspects of development and how to intentionally weave these factors to advance a more holis...

Background: The integration of behavioral health and primary care is a best practice to improve patient outcomes and achieve health equity. However, the process of integrating is complex, requiring organizational change and sometimes a complete system overhaul. Implementation science offers useful ideas for helping healthcare organizations to imple...

It is imperative that educators take a positive and preventive approach to support students and promote school safety. This article addresses the importance of identifying students who need additional mental health support and providing the highest quality support. These include best practices of emphasizing strength-based approaches, working with...

This study reviews findings for the first randomized controlled trial (RCT) on the Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) for school mental health (SMH) and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS). Since its development in the late 2000s, the ISF has been supported by federally funded centers for SMH and PBIS, and, guided by a nationa...

There is a national movement to advance school behavioral health, involving the mental health system partnering with schools' multitiered systems of support. This article underscores the critical need for school behavioral health and presents strategies to advance effective programming at district, state, and regional levels. Themes include diverse...

Background Despite an established taxonomy of implementation strategies, minimal guidance exists for how to select and tailor strategies to specific practices and contexts. We employed a replicable method to obtain stakeholder perceptions of the most feasible and important implementation strategies to increase mental health providers’ use of measur...

This study examined predisposing, enabling, and need factors associated with mental health (MH) services, the use of school-based, medical-based and specialty MH services, and the use of ≥ 2 MH services among children in kinship care. We analyzed a sample of children in kinship care (N = 718) selected from wave II of the National Survey on Child an...

In this article, we follow up on recommendations from the Division for Emotional and Behavioral Health (DEBH) for providing school mental health (SMH) services by offering additional implementation suggestions for teachers and school staff. We highlight the need for and urgency of SMH services, particularly during and after the pandemic, and also c...

Schools and research partners are increasingly implementing complex, multicomponent interventions and school-wide frameworks to better meet students' social, emotional, behavioral, and academic needs; however, in the research and real-world contexts, implementation is often fraught with many challenges and barriers to success. This study explores i...

Background: Despite an established, comprehensive taxonomy of implementation strategies, minimal guidance exists for how to select and adapt strategies to specific services and contexts. We employed a replicable method to identify the most feasible and important implementation strategies to increase mental health providers’ use of measurement-based...

Background: Despite an established, comprehensive taxonomy of implementation strategies, minimal guidance exists for how to select and adapt strategies to specific services and contexts. We employed a replicable method to identify the most feasible and important implementation strategies to increase mental health providers’ use of measurement-based...

Peer victimization is a widespread and heterogeneous phenomenon, especially during the transition to middle school, and is associated with numerous negative consequences. However, previous research is limited by variable-centric analyses and data manipulations that either fail to capture or mask the complexity of peer victimization many students ex...

Nearly 14% of all youth display disordered eating patterns. Despite the prevalence of these disorders, there is limited literature on the integration of eating disorder support services in schools. Further, there is often limited eating disorder knowledge and training for school mental health (SMH) professionals. This paper describes a two-phase st...

This study examined associations between teacher-student relationship quality at school and teachers' responsiveness to students' emotional concerns in a classroom and (a) students' intention to seek help at school for mental health concerns and (b) mental health-related service use. Data for analyses came from the School Mental Health Survey, a cr...

Despite significant progress in research on the treatment and prevention of psychological, behavioral, and health problems, the translation of this knowledge into population-wide benefit remains limited. This paper reviews the state of America’s children and families, highlighting the influence of stressful contextual and social conditions on child...

As schools increasingly adopt universal social, emotional, and behavioral screening, more research is needed to examine the effects of between-teacher differences due to error and bias on students' teacher-rated screening scores. The current study examined predictors of between-teacher differences in students' teacher-rated risk across one global a...

As schools increasingly implement multitiered systems of support, there is a pressing need to develop psychometrically sound implementation fidelity measures. The interconnected systems framework (ISF) is a multitiered model blending systems of positive behavioral interventions and supports with promotion, prevention, and intervention strategies of...

School Mental Health prevention approaches that use multi-tiered systems are advancing rapidly. However, there is a relative shortage of effective selective prevention programs feasible to implement within the school context. To optimize the effectiveness of selective prevention in this context, a Motivational Interviewing (MI)–based prevention pro...

Army family member health and resilience directly impact soldier readiness and are critical to maintaining a deployable force. Military families face unique stressors, including combat deployments, that can negatively impact child and family functioning. In 2014, the Army implemented the Child and Family Behavioral Health System (CAFBHS), one of 11...

Background An overview of the status of adolescent mental health promotion from an international context is provided including considerations for low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as well as developed nations. The role of stigma and a lack of structured systems to support child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) are discussed. Objective Ex...

Despite a high dropout rate and poor educational and posteducational outcomes, limited evidence-based practices have been validated with students at the high school level who have emotional and behavioral problems. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of a multitreatment, assessment-based intervention package. Participants were 647...

Background Adolescence is defined and key transitional elements are considered within a cross-cultural context. The importance of building mental health capacity for adolescents in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) as well as high income countries (HICs) is reviewed. Objectives Review the developmental period of adolescence, global needs fo...

This chapter will provide an overview of the school mental health field which has grown significantly since its beginning days in child guidance clinics and primary focus on expanded models inclusive only of community providers. The opportunity to provide mental and behavioral health services within the school setting has been an ongoing goal for m...

Distills ideas from each chapter in this book reflecting stakeholder recommendations for advancing school behavioral health (SBH) in a community related to major critical themes (collaboration, school-wide approaches, cultural humility, program quality, implementation support) and priority populations (juvenile justice, child welfare, military fami...

Reviews the development of the Southeastern School Behavioral Health Community (SSBHC, see www.schoolbehavioralhealth.org), a regional community of practice focused on improving and expanding school behavioral health (SBH) programs involving clinicians from the mental health system joining schools’ multitiered systems of support (MTSS). The communi...

This book examines the prevalence of emotional and behavioral problems in youth and the implications of little or low-quality mental health services available for them. It describes aspects of Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) and school mental health (SMH) that work together to form a comprehensive service delivery model called...

This study tested an integrated package for high-quality school mental health (SMH) services involving quality assessment and improvement, family engagement and empowerment, modular evidence-based practice, and implementation support. Within a two-year randomized controlled trial, 35 clinicians, who provided services to 529 students and their famil...

This study examined the relational factors influencing school engagement for parents of high school youth with emotional/behavioral disorders. Fourteen parents of high school students (12 mothers, two fathers) who received special education services participated in semistructured interviews. Formal qualitative analyses of audiotaped phone interview...

A prevailing model for mental health care for youth and families is to provide services within a "psychopathology" focused framework. This approach can compound problems for youth by imparting negative labels on them, and may be associated with iatrogenic impacts of interventions (e.g., stigmatization, lowered self-efficacy, dependency). This study...

Recognition of unmet mental health needs of children and youth has helped to prompt the advancement of more comprehensive mental health services for youth in schools, involving the mental health and education systems joining together to improve the depth and quality of services. These partnerships assist the mental health system in gaining access t...

Although it is known some youth access mental health services more readily than others, most service use studies used variable-centric approaches that produced heterogeneous groups and results that require parents and educators to understand diagnostic categories. Person-centered approaches group youth with similar patterns of behavioral and mental...

Despite schools increasingly adopting multitiered systems of support (MTSS) for prevention and intervention of mental health concerns, many are slow to adopt universal mental health screening (UMHS), a core MTSS feature, due to concerns about their limited capacity to meet the needs of all identified. In this study, we examined differences in the n...

This is a one-page position statement, Call for Action to Prevent Gun Violence in the United States of America. It presents an eight-point plan to prevent gun violence prepared by an interdisciplinary group of 19 prevention scholars. The statement has been widely endorsed by professional organizations and scholars and practitioners. https://curry.v...

A recently defined interconnected systems framework (ISF) provides explicit guidance on steps to align positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) and expanded school mental health (SMH) within the multitiered system of support (MTSS). As PBIS and SMH strategies align, there are opportunities to expand and improve effective programs and s...

Background: Integrated healthcare delivered by work groups in nontraditional service settings is increasingly common, yet contemporary implementation frameworks typically assume a single organization-or organizational unit-within which system-level processes influence service quality and implementation success. Recent implementation frameworks pre...

In this article, we have introduced a key challenge confronting the fields of education and mental health: the need for early detection of EBDs among students and a framework for early response to their needs. Next, we offered a potential solution: prioritizing strong, integrated partnerships between education and mental health systems. Following t...

The Interconnected Systems Framework (ISF) blends school mental health practices, systems, and resources into all levels of a multitiered system of supports (e.g., positive behavior interventions and supports). The ISF aims to improve mental health and school performance for all students by emphasizing effective school-wide promotion and prevention...

Beginning in the 1980s, mental health programs in schools began to expand beyond those delivered solely by schools and school employees. This was related to growing recognition of the limitations of separate community and school mental health efforts, and of the benefits of working together. These “expanded” school mental health (SMH) programs bega...

All around the world, partnerships among schools and other youth-serving systems are promoting more comprehensive school-based mental health services. This article describes the development of international networks for school mental health (SMH) including the International Alliance for Child and Adolescent Mental Health and Schools (INTERCAMHS) an...

Evidence-based assessment (EBA) is a critically important aspect of delivering high-quality, school-based mental health care for youth. However, research in this area is limited and additional applied research on how best to support the implementation of EBA in school mental health (SMH) is needed. Accordingly, this manuscript seeks to facilitate t...

Emotional and behavioral (EB) problems in children are associated with increased perceptions of strain in parenting. Among children receiving services, parenting stress has been linked to initiating services for their children, and may strain the relationship between parent and child. In contrast, parental engagement and empowerment in services is...

Many evidence-based programs to address the emotional needs of youth experiencing mood difficulties are based on implementing “manualized” interventions. This approach often presents feasibility challenges in the school setting. In contrast, modular strategies, which involve implementing the most effective practices for specific emotional/behaviora...

This article presents the psychometric properties of the Expanded School Mental Health Collaboration Instrument [Community Version], a measure for assessing collaboration from the perspective of community-based mental health professionals working in schools. A three-scale instrument (Types of Collaboration, Influences on Collaboration, and Perceive...

Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) and school mental health (SMH) are prominent initiatives in the United States to improve student behavior and promote mental health and wellness, led by education and mental health systems, respectively. Unfortunately, PBIS and SMH often operate separately in districts and schools, resulting in...

Given the increased access to mental health services that schools provide, there has been a growing consensus among mental health professionals for the delivery of services for youth in schools. Building the capacity of schools to provide evidence-based socio-emotional supports across a continuum of care has been prioritized in recent decades. Howe...

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) are increasingly involved in providing a range of services in communities and research indicates that such involvement will increase in the future. However, like other types of organizations, FBOs generally have been slow to embrace evidence-based practices (EBPs)—those that have scientific evidence of being benefic...

Recently, a national priority has been set to improve mental health services for children and families. It has been identified in epidemiological literature that in the United States, an approximate 15% of youth meet diagnostic criteria for emotional or behavioral problems. Furthermore, less than one in every five children that present with such ne...

The realisation that most mental disorders have their onset before the age of twenty-five has focused psychiatric research towards adolescent mental health. This book provides vivid examples of school mental health innovations from eighteen countries, addressing mental health promotion and interventions. These initiatives and innovations enable rea...

Educating children and youth with significant social, emotional, and behavioral (SEB) problems continues to pose significant challenges for special and general educators. The long-term effects of challenges this group of students experience include school dropout, mental health problems, unemployment, and high incarceration rates. To date, the majo...

The realisation that most mental disorders have their onset before the age of twenty-five has focused psychiatric research towards adolescent mental health. This book provides vivid examples of school mental health innovations from eighteen countries, addressing mental health promotion and interventions. These initiatives and innovations enable rea...

The realisation that most mental disorders have their onset before the age of twenty-five has focused psychiatric research towards adolescent mental health. This book provides vivid examples of school mental health innovations from eighteen countries, addressing mental health promotion and interventions. These initiatives and innovations enable rea...

The realisation that most mental disorders have their onset before the age of twenty-five has focused psychiatric research towards adolescent mental health. This book provides vivid examples of school mental health innovations from eighteen countries, addressing mental health promotion and interventions. These initiatives and innovations enable rea...

The realisation that most mental disorders have their onset before the age of twenty-five has focused psychiatric research towards adolescent mental health. This book provides vivid examples of school mental health innovations from eighteen countries, addressing mental health promotion and interventions. These initiatives and innovations enable rea...

The US Army has developed an innovative School Behavioral Health (SBH) program, part of the Child and Family Behavioral Health System, a collaborative, consultative behavioral health care model that includes SBH, standardized training of primary care providers in treatment of common behavioral health problems, use of tele-consultation/tele-behavior...

Youth suicide is a growing public health concern. As schools are becoming a key entry point for preventing and addressing youth suicide, the integration of suicide prevention efforts into existing school mental health (SMH) systems is becoming even more important. Unfortunately, as schools expand and adapt their existing SMH systems to meet this ne...

This article presents the results of a study assessing the needs and experiences of African American and White female survivors of sexual assault in the state of Maryland. Eight specific hypotheses regarding differences in the needs and experiences of African American as compared to White women receiving partial or no support through analyses of in...

Abstract With collaborative interprofessional teams integral to school mental health (SMH) service delivery, pre-service educational strategies are needed to promote interprofessional collaboration among SMH trainees. The current study evaluated the effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability of a pre-service, interprofessional SMH educational in...

Research in the area of school mental health (SMH) has undergone rapid evolution and expansion, and as such, studies require the use of diverse and emerging methodologies. In parallel with the increase in SMH research studies has been greater realization of the complex research methods needed for the optimal measurement, design, implementation, ana...

Strong partnerships involving schools, community systems, and families are critical in moving toward comprehensive and high-quality mental health programs and services for all students (Weist, 1997). Such partnerships are a foundational value in school mental health (SMH), with strong emphasis on the critical role of students in building, sustainin...

We are pleased to bring to you this second edition of the Handbook of School Mental Health, with each of us involved in careers that emphasize bringing effective programs and services to promote students’ positive behavior, health, mental health, and academic success in the most universal setting, “where they are,” in schools. We have all been deep...

As an increasing number of schools partner with community based providers to help address the mental health needs of students, there is a greater need for more comprehensive pre-service school mental health training, particularly for clinicians who have only worked in hospital and community mental health settings. This chapter presents a graduate l...

Children with severe emotional or behavioral disorders are at risk for learning difficulties, poor social relations, and misbehaviors, which often lead to poor academic outcomes. By using evidence-based practices (EBPs), teachers can help improve the functioning of these students and prevent school dropout. In spite of the importance of EBPs to pos...

The prevalence of unmet health and mental health needs among youth has spurred the growing consensus to develop strategies that integrate services to promote overall well-being. This pilot study reports on the feasibility and outcomes of a theory-driven, family-focused, integrated health-mental health promotion program for underserved adolescents r...

Engaging families in child and adolescent mental health services remains a challenge, despite recent advances in evidence-based practices that promote family involvement and comprehensive mental health services in schools. Little is known about effective strategies to engage and empower families as part of providing high-quality school mental healt...

Faith-based organizations (FBOs) are increasingly in­ volved in providing a range of services in communities and research indicates that such involvement will increase in the future. However, like other types of organizations, FBOs generally have been slow to embrace evidence-based practices (EBPs)—those that have scientific evidence of being benef...

Screening for mental health and behavioral problems in elementary schools has only recently been recommended and implementation is limited to less than 10 percent of schools. However, in the United States current multi-tiered improvement efforts in schools, including School-Wide Positive Behavior Supports (SWPBS) and Response to Intervention (RtI),...

Involving families in youth mental health services is foundational to achieving positive youth outcomes (for review, see Hoagwood et al., 2010). Unfortunately, this can be a particularly challenging process, and families are often not meaningfully involved in services. In studies of engagement in community mental health services, youth and family n...

With so few therapeutic outlets readily available to young people, schools have evolved into mental health centers for many students. Yet schools are hampered by limited access to resources needed to provide mental health promotion, prevention, and intervention services. Like its acclaimed predecessor, the Second Edition of the Handbook of School M...

Youth gangs are a significant problem in elementary and secondary schools across the United States (US) and are associated with violent crimes and serious delinquency (Chandler, Chapman, Rand, & Taylor, 1998). The presence of youth gangs in schools may negatively affect the school climate relating to an increased level of school violence (Laub & La...

For over two decades, the school mental health (SMH) movement has shown progressive growth in the United States (U.S.) and other countries based on some straightforward and compelling realities. First, child and adolescent mental health is among the most neglected of all health care needs, with 20 % or more of children and youth presenting more con...

Chapter 19 of this Handbook offers some concluding thoughts. The first part of this chapter presents an overview of critical themes and advancements evident in each of the Handbook’s major sections (i.e., research, innovation, and specific problems). This section is followed by a discussion of key outstanding issues relevant to culturally competent...