Region 9 School Mental Health Champions!
Welcome Summer
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“There’s room for all of you, and for everything you experience—the grim and the glorious, the wounded, wounding, healing and healed.”
― Hiro Boga
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Dear Region 9 School Mental Health Champions,
Summer is here! For some of you, it’s a time of break, vacation, and restoration. For others, it might be a time of closing the school year and preparing for a new one - of taking stock and exhaling after what may have been a busy year. Wherever this newsletter finds you, we hope you can take an inhale and exhale and honor the work of this past year.
This newsletter provides new programming and products from our center, upcoming school mental health conferences and learning opportunities from the network and field, and recent research and scholarship to support our school mental health practices and policies.
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Please contact us with specific requests, feedback, or your own resources you’d like us to share with your regional colleagues: pacificsouthwest@mhttcnetwork.org. We would love to hear from you!
Yours,
The Pacific Southwest MHTTC School Mental Health team
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The Pacific Southwest MHTTC is a SAMHSA-funded center serving American Samoa, Arizona, California, Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, Hawaii, Marshall Islands, Nevada, Northern Mariana Islands, and Palau.
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GET IN TOUCH:
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@PSMHTTC
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New & Upcoming Programming: In the works from our center...
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JOIN US!
» Rising Practices & Policies Revisited-Emerging Priorities in Mental & School Mental Health is back this summer.
Session 2:
Uplifting Supports, Strengths, and Healing for Refugees from War
Monday, June 12, 2023
Main session: 3:00-4:15 p.m. PT
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Session 3:
Working with Youth and Families Experiencing Homelessness and Home Insecurity
Monday, July 10, 2023
Main session: 3:00-4:15 p.m. PT
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Session 4:
Mental Health & Student Mental Health Workforce: The Woes & Wonders of Recruitment & Retention
Monday, August 14, 2023
Main session: 3:00-4:15 p.m. PT
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Access more information (how to register, speakers, supportive resources):
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Join us!
Our Motivational Interviewing learning continues this summer 2023. This round, we’re continuing to partner with Dr. Kristin Dempsey and creating specific sessions for school mental health providers.
» Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) & Motivational Interviewing as School Mental Providers, July 24, 3-5 p.m. PT (view your time zone)
» Developmentally Responsive Motivational Interviewing for School Based Providers, July 26, 2-5 p.m. PT (view your time zone)
Register here for one or both:
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Resources to Resource You |
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» Self-Harm and Suicide Awareness and Prevention in Childhood and Early Adolescence: A Brief for Elementary School Educators and School-Based Professionals (2003)
Guide
When children talk about death or a wish to die or hurt themselves—when they engage in suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs)—school adults often feel scared. They may feel they don’t have adequate training to guide their response. This can lead educators to react in unhelpful or even harmful ways, such as minimizing or ignoring the child’s support needs. This guide provides critical knowledge and resources to help schools recognize and assess the warning signs of STBs, and to respond in ways that keep children as safe as possible.
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Brief
This brief (based on the guide above) is designed to provide elementary school personnel with critical knowledge and resources to help them recognize and assess the warning signs of STBs, and to respond so that harm is reduced, and children are kept safe.
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» Our Young Children & Suicide Prevention: A Brief for Parents and Caregivers
Guide
Learning that your elementary-aged child is thinking about self-harm or using language that signals suicide is frightening and disorienting. Thankfully, suicide is preventable and there are many things that you as parents and caregivers can do to help keep your children safe. This resource is designed to help parents and caregivers prevent suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs), recognize the warning signs of STBs, and, when necessary, intervene early and effectively to keep their child safe.
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Brief
This brief (based on the guide above) is designed to help parents and caregivers prevent suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs), recognize the warning signs of STBs, and, when necessary, intervene early and effectively to keep their children safe.
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Learning Opportunities from the Field... |
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Virtual learning events from other MHTTCs in our network
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Check out the rich offerings across the MHTTC network here:
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Upcoming conferences and professional development opportunities
» Brief Intervention (BI) for Substance Using Adolescents: Professional Competency Training Our partners with the Community Prevention Initiative are offering a two-day virtual training on BI, a short-term counseling intervention that consists of two to four sessions aimed at adolescents who use alcohol and/or other drugs. This approach uses motivational interviewing, cognitive behavior therapy, and the stages of change model to meet the needs of adolescents. | June 7 & 8, 2023 • 8:30 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. PT
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» School Crisis Recovery and Renewal Leadership Fellowship Offered by our partners at the School Crisis Recovery & Renewal project (a National Child Traumatic Stress Network site), the inaugural School Crisis Recovery & Renewal Project’s Leadership Fellowship is an 8-month long program that provides intensive training, coaching, and peer consultation to school crisis leaders nationwide committed to recovery & renewal. Application deadline is July 15, 2023. Learn more and apply here. SCRR has tons of summer and future learning opportunities beyond and including the fellowship as well: https://schoolcrisishealing.org/events-learning-opportunities/
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What we're reading, listening to, and learning from |
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New Product for Schools to Provide Parents
» How to Find a Therapist for My Child One of our school mental health specialists who serves with the Orange County Student Mental Health Resource Directory recently developed and released a four-part set of brochures designed to support parents and families in finding and accessing a therapist. With the right information and partnering with the right mental health provider, parents/guardians can transform the lives and wellness of their child(ren) for the better.
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Read on for research, considerations, and recommendations for how to support healthy social media use for young people, including how to intervene cyberhate, limit use to promote sleep and focus, and a call to screen young people for problematic social media use as intervention practices.
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This paper describes a novel interprofessional curriculum and its focus on trauma-informed care—notably, including institutional and racial trauma in the context of medical care professional development. Read on for transferrable learnings for school mental health providers.
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This paper identifies core considerations for equitable school mental health screening and provides guiding principles for each phase of the screening process, from screening readiness to execution to follow up. In the authors’ words, “the time has come to re-envision how we approach school mental health screening.”
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This timely paper provides an ecologically based conceptual model synthesizing previous literature relating to BIPOC youth barriers to service utilization. The review emphasizes factors that serve as barriers and facilitators, contributing to disparities in community mental health service utilization for BIPOC youth, including client (i.e. stigma, system mistrust, childcare needs, help seeking attitudes), provider (i.e. implicit bias, cultural humility, clinician efficacy), structural/organizational (i.e., clinic location/proximity to public transportation, hours of operation, wraparound services, accepting Medicaid, and other insurance-related issues), and community (i.e. improving experiences in education, the juvenile criminal-legal system, medical, and social service systems), and concludes with suggestions for how we can dismantle harmful systems and services.
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This study examines Asian American (AA) adolescents and young adults’ perceptions and experiences of anti-Asian racism and violence, and their depression severity prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study finds that AA adolescent and young adults are experiencing multiple health and social crises stemming from increased anti-Asian racism during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors call for policymakers to strengthen data systems that connect racial discrimination and mental health, and to institute prevention measures and anti-racist mental health services that are age and culture appropriate for AA adolescent and young adults.
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Contact the Pacific Southwest MHTTC
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Disclaimer: The views, opinions, and content expressed in this newsletter do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), or the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
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