The School-Based Mental Health Collaboration (SBMHC): A Multi-Level University-School Partnership

Abstract

This article describes The School-Based Mental Health Collaboration (SBMHC), a novel school-based mental health partnership between Teachers College, Columbia University, and several high-poverty public grade schools in New York City. SBMHC is grounded in attachment and mentalization theory and practice. It applies nested mentalization to multilevel work with all school stakeholders, encouraging school leaders, faculty, staff, and parents to use mentalization with children, many of whom have experienced trauma. Graduate students serve as classroom consultants (CC), spending a half day per week in the classroom observing, doing push-in interventions, co-teaching a social-emotional learning curriculum, coaching the teacher, and making referrals for children. CCs follow up on referrals and coordinate among parents, teachers, and off-site providers. The CCs in turn receive weekly didactics and reflective clinical supervision. SBMHC works with school leaders to assess the school’s social-emotional climate, identify unmet need for mental health services, and locate low-cost providers in the community. SBMHC is a promising model that aims to enhance social-emotional learning for all students while also identifying and referring symptomatic students. It thus combines universal and targeted approaches to serving high-risk students at low-resourced schools.