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Into the Community

National Initiatives to Improve Children's Mental Health

Donna Lloyd-Kolkin, Ph.D., Health Communication Specialist

Following the 1999 publication of the Surgeon General's report on mental health, other national reports and activities spurred further interest in school mental health issues. In 2002, the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, the Policy Partnership and the National Association of State Mental Health Directors published an important concept paper entitled Mental Health, Schools and Families Working Together for All Children and Youth: Toward a Shared Agenda. Six states-Missouri, Ohio, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, and Vermont-received seed grants to build collaborations across education, family-serving organizations, and mental health agencies. These states formed the nucleus of a growing Shared Agenda Community of Practice on School Behavioral Health.

Interest in school mental health issues was also sparked by the report of the President's Freedom Commission on Mental Health in 2003. President George W. Bush identified three obstacles that prevented Americans with mental health problems from getting the help they need: the stigma that surrounds mental illness, unfair treatment limitations and financial requirements related to mental health care among private health insurers, and the fragmented mental health delivery system. The Commission identified schools as one important place for early identification of children with mental health disorders. It also recommended that school mental health programs be improved and expanded.

Currently, there are several national initiatives underway. The Alliance for School Mental Health is a collaboration of several national and state mental health initiatives that was founded after a summit on evidence-based partnerships for school mental health, organized by the Center for the Advancement of Children's Mental Health at Columbia University. The Alliance is working to implement many of the recommendations that emerged from the Summit.

Two federally-supported centers are working to promote school mental health issues to educators and policy makers across the country. The Center for Mental Health in Schools at the University of California at Los Angeles focuses much of its efforts on promoting New Directions for Student Support, a national initiative to encourage schools to re-organize their thinking on how to create support systems (such as community mental health services) to remove barriers to student learning. The Center for Mental Health Analysis and Action at the University of Maryland School of Medicine seeks to strengthen policies and programs in school mental health through the development of a Community of Practice. Both Centers are funded by the Health Services Resources Administration and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).

SAMHSA provides funding for Caring for Every Child's Mental Health, a nationwide communication campaign to increase the public's awareness of the importance of children's mental health, to increase recognition of serious emotional health issues in children, and to encourage families, caregivers and educators to seek early intervention in a child's mental health, if needed.

Caring Across Communities is a national initiative funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to provide school-connected mental health services for children from immigrant and refugee services. The mental health needs of these children are severely under-addressed.