School-based Mental Health Services

Book excerpt: School-Based Mental Health Services fills an important gap by challenging school psychologists to think broadly about how to best use their training and skills to empower individuals, schools, and communities. The authors urge readers to choose not only efficacious programs but also programs that are effective through sensitive adaptation and modification on the basis of ethnicity, race, and culture of local schools and communities. This volume presents the Participatory Cultural-Specific Intervention Model (PCSIM)--an innovative model grounded in theories and techniques of applied cultural anthropology and school psychology. This intriguing model establishes a continuous feedback-driven, self-perpetuating process that balances research with application. It includes an inventive array of participant observations, expert consultation, research, and continuous program refinement that extends the traditional model of intervention into program development. Practitioners will be attracted to this innovative and far-reaching approach and will quickly see how to become system change agents within their schools. School-Based Mental Health Services is the latest volume in the Applying Psy