Preservice Training for School Mental Health Clinicians

Abstract

As an increasing number of schools partner with community based providers to help address the mental health needs of students, there is a greater need for more comprehensive pre-service school mental health training, particularly for clinicians who have only worked in hospital and community mental health settings. This chapter presents a graduate level interdisciplinary course on school mental health (Best Practices and Innovations in School Mental Health) that was developed to equip graduate mental health and health students with an appreciation and understanding of how to effectively provide high quality, evidence-based services in schools, within a three-tiered intervention framework. The course focused on addressing four key content areas: (1) Why mental health in schools? (2) Setting up Shop in Schools, (3) Important Stakeholder Perspectives, and (4) Evidence-based Practices in Schools. The syllabus, as well as specific class activities and assignments are reviewed, with strengths and areas for improvement considered.