Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Youth with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

T oday, most schools offer some type of mental health services to their students, and there is a growing body of empirically rigorous studies examining the effects of these services on both academic and mental health outcomes for students (e.g., Becker, Brandt, Stephan, & Chorpita, 2014). When students are identified as having emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) and are in need of counseling and psychological services, they often receive these services in school-based mental health programs (Kutash, Duchnowski, & Green, 2011). Schools have a long history of providing mental health services for their students. Historically, schools have in fact served the unique role of providing a vision for the highest held goals of our society. However, the vision for the promotion of the mental health of children and youth in the schools is cloudy. The instances of violence ranging from bullying to guns to suicide in schools have become all too common. These events have created an atmosphere in which the diverse stakeholders of the schools—its parents, teachers, support staff, and administrators, and representatives of community agencies—realize the need to work together to clarify the vision and promote the mental health of our children and youth. The purpose of this article is to help achieve this vision by providing an overview and examination of some of the major factors facing schools in their efforts to meet the mental health needs of their students more effectively, particularly those identified with EBD. Several factors are identified as challenges for school officials as they proceed with the important task of meeting the mental health needs of students. In the pages that follow, these factors are examined and, where possible, information from the evidence base is presented to inform understanding and future planning. Among these factors, the first is the need to embrace the best information available on the prevalence of EBD in children to accurately determine the extent of the need, the range of disorders that affect these children, and the resources required to meet their diverse needs effectively. Second, the entire child-serving community needs to fully grasp the findings that students who have EBD and who are served in a special education setting have serious mental health problems and are not simply bad or undersocialized. Their problems are complex and often cut across the traditional agency boundaries of education, mental health, and child welfare systems. Third, in spite of a wealth of evidence-based interventions, the outcomes for students identified as having EBD are not satisfactory. Fourth, effective school-based mental health programs need to be universal in scope and part of the total school culture and value system. Finally, if schools are going to be effective at promoting the mental health needs of youth, they need to be more effective in supporting and engaging families as partners in promoting positive emotional development and academic success for their children. While there is agreement that the issues raised above go beyond the schoolhouse door and require, at a minimum, a partnership between the mental health and education systems, there is no record of widespread, effective collaboration between the two systems. Kutash, Duchnowski, and Lynn (2006) identified some of the contrasting perspectives in the two systems that may serve to impede constructive collaboration. These areas, listed in Table 1, are related to the different conceptual and theoretical frameworks influencing the training and focus of the interventions in the two systems. Fortunately, both systems are described as sharing a common goal aimed at improving the quality of life for children and ensuring the resources needed to accomplish this. This common goal can be a positive force in facilitating the continued development of a more effective partnership and there are indications that this is happening. For example, the contents of this issue of Beyond Behavior provide a sign from the education community of movement toward more effective alliance. The journal is designed for practitioners such as teachers, counselors, and paraprofessionals who offer direct service to children who have EBD. Readers of this issue will increase their scope of knowledge of mental health from articles addressing interventions for children who have psychoses, and implications for educators from the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Society (DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association, 2013). From the mental health side, today’s practitioners who work with children MEETING THE MENTAL HEALTH NEEDS OF YOUTH WITH EBD