Improving student mental health in California: Best practices and initial outcomes

Every day, faculty and campus staff encounter students exhibiting signs of emotional or mental distress, but are often unequipped to recognize them or respond appropriately. The Report of the Surgeon General's Conference on Children's Mental Health: A National Action Agenda (2000) states that approximately nine million children in the United States have serious emotional problems at any given time. Yet, according to a study by Kataoka, Zhang, and Wells (2002), only one in five of these children are receiving appropriate treatment. $60 million dollars was allocated by the voter-approved Mental Health Services Act (MHSA; formerly Proposition 63) to implement a wide range of programs and policies aimed at training faculty, students, and campus staff from pre-Kindergarten through to the university systems to create campus environments that are supportive, responsive to student and family needs, and well-informed about mental health issues. Programs include training in symptom recognition for teachers, parents and community partners, a social marketing campaign, peer-to-peer support, cross-system collaboration, enhanced distress and depression screening, and policy reform. Programs are well into implementation, and initial outcomes from the independent evaluation will be discussed.