Home      Login

Abstract: 

Schools are being increasingly used as a system for delivering mental health services to students and their families to promote mental health, prevent mental health difficulties, and treat mental health problems. School behavioral health (SBH) programs are most beneficial when appropriately tailored to meet a school’s needs using comprehensive data that speak to the functioning of the entire student body. Systematically evaluating all students (e.g., within a school or district) using a universal mental health screener is increasingly recognized as an important tool for understanding the behavioral and emotional needs of individual students and of the broader learning environment. This paper provides an overview of school-based universal mental health screening, including benefits, limitations, and obstacles to implementation, and evidence to support the feasibility of implementation by presenting the experiences of a universal mental health screening in K-12 schools within a South Carolina school district.

Keywords: Children’s behavioral/emotional health, school behavioral health, universal screening in schools

Affiliations:  1: University of South Carolina Department of Psychology; 2: University of South Carolina; 3: University of South Carolina.