Interagency Collaboration to Improve School Outcomes for Students With Mental Health Challenges

Interagency Collaboration to Improve School Outcomes for Students With Mental Health Challenges

Kristina Bixler, Jeffrey Alvin Anderson
Copyright: © 2018 |Pages: 16
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-5225-2578-3.ch009
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Abstract

Students with significant emotional-behavioral concerns and mental illness tend to experience poor educational and social outcomes. This chapter describes some of the challenges facing schools that are responsible for educating students with and at-risk for mental health challenges. Although some students encounter numerous risks, thereby increasing the chances of developing mental illness and failing school, there are also protective factors that can be identified and harnessed to counterbalance such risks and promote higher levels of resilience. By examining relationships among factors such as poverty, mental well-being, family engagement, resiliency, and school performance, a school-focused, community-based framework is suggested for responding to and overcoming these challenges. This chapter provides practical guidelines for schools, community agencies, and families to work together to support and engage young people who are at-risk for school failure due to emotional-behavioral concerns and mental health challenges.
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Background

Although the relationships between school functioning and mental health challenges are not fully understood (Epstein, Nelson, Trout, & Mooney, 2005), scholars have suggested wide-ranging interactions among school and non-school factors may be at fault, which can include clinical, familial, and environmental variables (Anderson, 2011). Explanations for the poor academic achievement for students with emotional challenges have included (1) poor grades leading to aggression; (2) aggression leading to poor grades; (3) a reciprocal relationship between poor grades and emotional challenges; and (4) other underlying factors that cause both poor grades and emotional challenges (Epstein et al., 2005; Barriga, Dorans, Newell, Morrison, Barbetti, & Robbins, 2002). Adelman and Taylor (2006a; b) described a continuum with causes from environmental factors, causes coming from within the person, and a transactional view caused by an interaction between the environment and the individual.

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