A N AT I O N A L P R O B L E M
A
ccording to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, some 6 million children between the ages of 4 and 17 have ADHD. Many of them also suffer from other mental health issues, such as depression, anxiety, oppositional defiant disorder, or bipolar disorder. Almost 3 million take medication; millions more seek help from community mental health providers. The effects on the lives of children and their families can be devastating. Like the girl in Owens’ study, students with ADHD may be offensive to others or even violent, making it hard for them to make and keep friends. Their behavior disrupts the class and absorbs a disproportionate share of the teacher’s attention. In the long term, children with ADHD are at higher risk of school failure, suspension, expulsion, and dropping out, as well as drug and alcohol abuse. Under federal law, these children qualify for special services at school. But many teachers don’t know how to help those children, or are so overwhelmed by the various demands on their time that they don’t know where to start.
Owens and Evans are trying to bridge the gap between counseling and teaching to give teachers the skills and support they need to more effectively guide students with ADHD.
Julie Owens and Steven Evans direct one of the few centers in the country focused on research and training in school mental health.
.32
PHOTO: ROBB DECAMP
“In national surveys, nearly 50 percent of teachers say they didn’t get enough training in this area (behavior modification) in college,” Owens says. She and Evans are trying to change that by bridging the gap between counseling and teaching to give teachers the skills and support they need to more effectively guide students with ADHD. One example is the Youth Experiencing Success in School (Y.E.S.S.) Program, launched after a Hocking County judge realized that he was seeing too many young people with behavioral issues in his court. In 2001, he contacted the Department of Psychology at Ohio University to ask for help. After consulting for a year with the judge and school personnel—and looking at clinical practices proven to help children with ADHD—Owens and her community partners developed Y.E.S.S., a school-based program to provide comprehensive support for elementary school children. Y.E.S.S. puts mental health providers—Ohio University graduate students, professional school counselors, or school social workers— in each of the elementary schools in southeastern Ohio’s Logan-Hocking School District for at least 15 hours a week. They assess children with behavioral problems and develop individualized programs for use within the classroom. Parents and children alike meet with the clinicians individually, as well as in support groups; teachers get inservice training and meet with the clinicians on a bi-weekly basis for consultation and support. The idea of linking clinicians directly to schools was (and to some extent remains) an unusual one; Y.E.S.S. was listed in the 2007 Registry of Innovative Practices maintained by the Annapolis Coalition on the Behavioral Health Workforce. Based on her experience with Y.E.S.S., Owens is now collaborating with Evans and researchers at Florida International University to develop ways to help teachers better implement classroom interventions such as one known as the daily report card. It’s a technique in which a teacher identifies desired behaviors and goals for achieving those behaviors, and then gives feedback throughout the day on how well the student is doing in reaching those goals. Y.E.S.S. has shown that the report card works. But a variety of factors—demands on their time, amount of support from the school, lack of training—keep teachers from using it. “We know there is variability in teachers’ implementation of interventions,” Owens says. “We’re trying to understand how we can better support teachers to help them overcome barriers to implementation.” In a three-year project funded by the U.S.