LATE BREAKING ABSTRACT II: CAN STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH PROMOTION PREVENT SCHOOL VIOLENCE?

Following the school shooting killing 17 people in Parkland, FL on February 14, 2018, many policymakers, practitioners, researchers, and youth activists called for renewed efforts to understand the link between mental health problems in students and school violence. This roundtable discussion will bring together representatives from federal agencies, local education agencies, and research projects to highlight past and current efforts to promote student mental health. They will discuss different perspectives about how these efforts can improve overall school climate and reduce acts of violence in schools, ranging from bullying and assault to more serious incidents. Panelists will provide opinions and subject matter expertise on how the collection of existing evidence for student mental health programs and policies can be used to inform future school violence prevention efforts.

Panelists from SAMHSA and NIJ will discuss their efforts at the federal level to improve access to mental health in schools. SAMHSA’s Project Advancing Wellness and Resilience Education (AWARE) grant program and Expert Panel on School Mental Health seek to improve adoption of comprehensive school mental health practices on state and local levels. NIJ’s Comprehensive Schools Safety Initiative has funded a number of grants since 2014 researching student mental health programs to improve schools safety and reduce school violence.

Dr. Banks from RTI International will discuss the evaluation of 20+ years of programs for student mental health including legacy programs such as Safe Schools/Healthy Students and Project AWARE. Given large amounts of data previously collected for school mental health initiatives, secondary analyses could explore the effectiveness of these programs in preventing school violence specifically.

Dr. Sargent will represent the perspective of a local education agency, Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools (CMS), and how national efforts affect local programming to improve access to mental healthcare. CMS, an NIJ CSSI recipient, has a thriving school-based mental health program that embeds community mental health providers within schools, a model becoming more popular across the nation.

Dr. Bradshaw will provide wide-ranging perspective as a prolific researcher of mental health in schools including interventions within the multitiered PBIS structure and violence prevention programs such as Coping Power. Dr. Bradshaw is also an NIJ CSSI grantee.

The panel will also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of focusing on mental health promotion as a solution to school violence. While mental health promotion benefits student well-being, more research is needed about its preventative effect on school violence, as it is likely not sufficient to stop all serious school violence incidents.