Effective Teacher Professional Development for School-Based Mental Health Promotion: A Review of the Literature.

Teachers are critically involved in the delivery of school-based mental health promotion (SMHP) interventions in school, though pre-service teacher education often leaves teachers feeling underprepared in this area. Thus, understanding how best to build teachers' capacity for delivery through effective professional development (PD) is essential for teachers to fulfill their role as delivery agents to achieve SMHP outcomes. This systematized review focuses on identifying components of high-quality teacher PD for SMHP and examining the empirical support for these components.

Prevalence, Best Practice Use, and Member Engagement on School Mental Health Teams.

School mental health (SMH) teams have been widely recommended to support multi-tiered mental health program implementation in schools. Available research suggests emerging best practices that promote effective SMH teaming and indicates the importance of having team members who are highly engaged (e.g.

Student, teacher, and classroom predictors of between-teacher variance of students' teacher-rated behavior.

The current study examined between-teacher variance in teacher ratings of student behavioral and emotional risk to identify student, teacher and classroom characteristics that predict such differences and can be considered in future research and practice. Data were taken from seven elementary schools in one school district implementing universal screening, including 1,241 students rated by 68 teachers. Students were mostly African America (68.

Engaging youth in bullying prevention through community-based participatory research.

Few studies that engage youth in community-based participatory research (CBPR) focus on issues of safety/violence, include elementary school-aged youth, or quantitatively assess outcomes of the CBPR process. This article expands understanding of CBPR with youth by describing and evaluating the outcomes of a project that engaged fifth-grade students at 3 schools in bullying-focused CBPR. Results suggest that the project was associated with decreases in fear of bullying and increases in peer and teacher intervention to stop bullying.

Ready, willing, and able: developing a support system to promote implementation of school-based prevention programs.

While the number and scope of evidence-based health, education, and mental health services continues to grow, the movement of these practices into schools and other practice settings remains a complex and haphazard process. The purpose of this paper is to describe and present initial support for a prevention support system designed to promote high-quality implementation of whole school prevention initiatives in elementary and middle schools. The function and strategies of a school-based prevention support system are discussed, including key structures and activities undertaken to identify, select, and provide technical assistance to school personnel.