Improving the impact of school-based mental health and other supportive programs on students' academic outcomes: how do we get there from here?

Abstract

This is the second issue in a two-part special series on evaluating the educational and academic impact of school-based programs that provide non-academic types of support, including mental health, mentoring, and family support. The papers in this series detail challenges and provide insights and practical applications based on theory and empirical research to make strong contributions toward developing, evaluating, and improving academic outcomes. Papers include a comprehensive literature review of randomized controlled studies of mental health treatments that included academic outcomes; a matched comparison group evaluation of an expanded school mental health program; a description of a qualitative process of developing a brief, modularized school-based mental health intervention partially designed to focus on academic outcomes; and a randomized study comparing academic outcomes between students who received one session of motivational interviewing to students who received two sessions paired with weekly graphical feedback on their grade point average.