We therefore provide a descriptive review of what the available lessons teach about healthy technology use and how they approach this aim. Some have one resource set that is designed for applicability to students across multiple grade levels, while others are grade differentiated. 1 These topics reflect common categories based on our review and may not align exactly with the terminology used within a particular resource.
Data Availability
We provide ongoing technical assistance and support to help schools and districts successfully implement, evaluate, and refine their CSMH plans. Over time, addressing student mental health can even result in cost savings for school districts and communities. Studies that capitalize on existing practice infrastructures for school-based services can accelerate the translation of research findings into practice and allow researchers to efficiently address NIMH school research priorities. The intervention development research funded through the pilot effectiveness NOFO (PAR ) may emphasize intervention refinement, personalization, optimization, augmentation, or sequencing to enhance the clinical impact or cultural fit of the intervention, and/or to improve the feasibility of implementation in school settings.
References
To alleviate this barrier, 26 states enacted laws to increase financial support for school-based mental health services. During the pandemic, 12 states enacted laws that support strategic planning to identify barriers and approaches to increase access to school-based mental health services. School-based mental health care can improve access to mental health services, reduce risk, and improve mental health and academic outcomes for students. At the same time, youth utilization of mental health services has decreased, which may reflect families’ concerns in seeking non-emergency, in-person care given the risk of COVID-19 and shortages of available health care professionals working in children’s mental health.
Risk of Overidentification
Large-scale, school-based interventions are potentially effective for addressing this global challenge. It will also foster a holistic perspective on student well-being, equipping psychiatrists to support school children effectively within educational settings. For example, confidentiality concerns frequently arise, as navigating the complexities of student privacy laws and sharing information between schools and health care providers can lead to gambling legal and ethical dilemmas. These programs require close communication, collaboration, and strategic planning among pediatricians, mental health clinicians, parents, teachers, and other individuals involved in working with young people.
- These three focal aims – critical awareness, self-reflection, and behavioral change – likely have relevance beyond school settings, too, and particularly for mental health professionals who work directly with youth.
- Relevant, too, is the aforementioned experimental research, which demonstrated that education about persuasive tech design features – presented alongside messages about autonomy and social justice – can boost adolescents’ motivation to self-regulate social media use (Galla et al., Reference Galla, Choukas‐Bradley, Fiore and Esposito2021).
- Start an Active Minds Chapter at your school to engage students in mental health advocacy and support.
Universal programs do not have clear evidence of success, they crowd out time spent on academic learning, and they misallocate limited resources away from targeted interventions to those with known need—a high proportion of whom already do not have access to appropriate treatment. Twenty years ago, a typical school would have offered, on average, 14 separate mental health oriented programs. This confusion has contributed to a national shift in the profession from a service-focused model of helping individual students to a program-focused model of “helping all students” (through delivery of mental health programs and training).
