Interventions like the Good Behavior Game or the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Program have proven to be effective in improving academic, mental health, and substance use outcomes with impressive returns on investment, but they are not widely adopted around the country.
Why? What might be done to encourage more effective, earlier interventions to promote academic success and healthier outcomes for children?
Those questions are being explored by experts brought together by the National Collaborative on Education and Health and Mental Health America (MHA), with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation (WKKF) in a grant to MHA. The answers can influence both practice and policy in education and mental health in the coming years.
The working group discovered that many of the interventions and implementation models used to promote mental health were almost identical to those previously examined in the substance misuse working group. Program implementation models such as PROSPER and Communities That Care, and policy recommendations around collective impact model approaches, braiding funding, and sustainabilityin the substance use prevention area, all appeared to overlap with strategies and initiatives that promoted mental health among children.
So, the working group went in a different direction and began to explore a world of other initiatives seemingly related to prevention for mental health, but under a number of different names—such as social and emotional learning, mindsets, school climate, and trauma-informed schools.