Strengthening Components and Processes of Family Involvement in School Mental Health

Abstract

(from the chapter) This chapter discusses strategies for increasing family involvement in school mental health. Involving families in youth mental health services is foundational to achieving positive youth outcomes. Unfortunately, this can be a particularly challenging process, and families are often not meaningfully involved in services. In studies of engagement in community mental health services, youth and family no-show rates at initial appointments range from 28 % to 62 %. Thus, at a basic level of involvement, some families are not being engaged in services. This has the potential to compromise the delivery of evidence-based interventions given that family involvement may be an essential factor in obtaining and maintaining positive outcomes for youth. As national mental health policy calls for families to become active consumers of mental health services, and for children and youth to receive more comprehensive services, it is increasingly important to review empirically supported strategies for effectively involving families in mental health services so that these approaches can be consistently integrated into practice. Despite the call for and importance of incorporating families in youth mental health services, community-based locations, such as schools, bring unique challenges to engaging families in youth mental health services. These include the inability of the family to get to the school during school hours, variability in behavior and attitudes of school staff toward families, and negative experiences family members may have had with their own schooling. Thus, it is important to examine effective family involvement strategies specifically within the context of SMH. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).