MHSUCF Project

Links to Learning

PI: Marc Atkins, PhD

Links to Learning is funded by the NIMH from 2005 to 2010 to study a model for school-based mental health services for urban low-income children and families that is guided by empirical evidence for schooling as critical for children’s social and emotional adjustment, and by evidence for the direct and indirect benefits of academic achievement for children’s mental health. A primary hypothesis is that aligning mental health resources to support children’s learning will lead to stronger mental health outcomes for children, relative to mental health services as usual. The model builds on cumulative evidence from a program of NIMH-funded research based in inner city Chicago Public Schools in which community mental health providers collaborated with:

• parent advocates to effectively maintain families in a school-based mental health program
• classroom teachers to enhance children’s academic performance
• peer-identified influential teachers (key opinion leaders) to influence classroom teachers’ use of behavior management strategies.

This study replicates and extends these collaborative models to focus on the most robust teacher and parent predictors of student learning. Children with one or more Disruptive Behavior Disorder in Kindergarten through 4th grades were identified by teacher screening and follow-up standardized parent and teacher ratings. Schools were randomly selected and assigned to either a comparison mental health services-as-usual condition, or to the experimental intervention condition, in which mental health providers (MHPs) are working in collaboration with key opinion leader (KOL) teachers, and parent advocates (PAs) to provide consultation to children’s classroom teachers and parents on evidence-based strategies for targeted predictors of children’s learning. It is hypothesized that, relative to comparison sites, the experimental school mental health intervention will lead to improvement in urban children’s academic performance, behavior at home, and behavior at school relative to the treatment-as-usual comparison.