Reducing Unmet Mental Health Need of African-American Children

School-based mental health (SBMH) is a critical pathway for accessing mental health services for African American/Black (AAB) youth who experience the greatest gap in unmet mental health need in comparison to their White, non-Hispanic peers, but are twice as likely to access mental health services in schools as outpatient or specialty clinics. Unfortunately, AAB children's access to SBMH is dependent on school intervention team decision making, which often involves consideration of factors other than student need. School personnel on intervention teams disproportionately attribute AAB youth's behavior problems as disciplinary issues rather than mental health needs, reducing the likelihood AAB students receive SBMH services. Consistent with the empirical literature, patient families and stakeholders recommend universal mental health screening to better identify AAB children with mental health needs and enhancements to address implicit social cognitions that impact decision-making processes and poor mental health literacy of school personnel making intervention referral decisions. Thus, we will evaluate the comparative effectiveness of the SBMH delivery system enhanced with screening to a package of enhancements implemented with screening in SBMH to increase the likelihood AAB students receive the services they critically need. The enhancements include implementation supports, including training, coaching, and data-based feedback. We will test both whether and how (i.e., mediational analyses of causal pathway including knowledge, attitudinal, and behavioral observation of unintentional bias and mental health literacy) these enhancements impact student-level intervention and disciplinary referral outcomes. In a mixed method process evaluation and comparative analysis, we will also examine school-level contextual factors (i.e., team member tenure, pre-intervention discipline rates, racial/ethnic and socioeconomic composition of student body, and perceptions of intervention impact and acceptability) and implementation outcomes (i.e., fidelity, dosage/exposure, and reach).

Inclusion criteria

• Students at study school
• School intervention teams at study school

Exclusion criteria

• Students who are wards of the state or any other institution, agency, or entity