buy custom Comprehensive Mental Health Services essay

buy custom Comprehensive Mental Health Services essay Introduction The awareness of mental health needs of adolescents and children is increasing among health care specialists. Violence in schools, increased dropout rates, suicide and homicide tendencies, bullying, and high-risk behaviors are observed commonly across the United Kingdom and United States schools. The economic impact and human toll of insufficiently addressing mental health issues is extremely crucial because untreated mental abnormalities increase higher rates of children incarcerations, drug abuse, unemployment, school dropout, and family dysfunction. The proportion of school children, in which mental disorders are observed, has gone up from 8 percent to 22 percent over the past two decades.According to the United States Pediatric Report on juveniles mental health published in 2000,18 percent of school children require active mental health treatment, 12 percent show significant functional disorder, and 6 percent have severe functional disability. These data were extracted from the Institute of Mental Abnormalities in the United States school children (US Public Health Service, 2000). Current study attempts to seek how mental health services are developing as a strategy to resolve these issues by eliminating barriers to availing mental health interventions, and enhancing coordination of those treatments. The study also examines potential in the School-initiated mental health services for prevention efforts, and intervention strategies. Needless to mention that more than 70 percent of health physicians advocate the need of counseling and psychological facilities in school campus, which include interventions, referrals, and assessments.Schools play a powerful role in providing mental health treatment for many pupils.These mental health interventions range from minimal services offered by school pediatrics to a compact, integrated program of identification, prevention, and treatment within a school campus. Many schools in the United States have introduced comprehensive SBHC benefits for the benefit of children. There are now 1,200 SBHCs providing mental health servic es. Mental Health Services on School Campuses The optimal way to identify components of schools initiated mental health services is to examine a three-leveled health model of needs and services. The first level provides a set of health services for minor mental abnormalities. Activities in the first levelmodel should be ubiquitous so that all children can avail in the school campus. Preventive mental wellness programs are those, which focus on minimizing risk factors and building awareness, providing a friendly, positive, and social environment at school campus while ensuring that each pupil receives an encouragement from his or her family that associates with healthy development. A sense of pupil involvement in school activities renders positive influence on academic career and minimizes risky behaviors.For instance, schools must offer students extracurricular activities, multiple and varied curricular programs, thereby increasing the probability that each pupil will effort to be successful in some sphere of school life. The second level focuses on the targeted mental health interventions, which are created to help children, who have one or more mental health disorders, but their performance is quite satisfactory to engage in many academic, social, and other extracurricular activities. Second level services can include provision of individual therapy to students. Further, for students facing learning problems in education, as well as for those showing behavioral problems, this tier may include behavioral characteristics of these students, and specialized and individualized education programs may be designed that can eliminate these students behavioral problems. The third level of mental health services focuses on those students who are diagnosed with severe mental health disorders and symptoms. These children need treatment from a multidisciplinary professional team that usually includes an individual therapy, special education services, pharmacotherapy, and coordination of social agencies. Researches, so far, have not produced satisfactory results on the success of school-initiated mental health services models. Whereas, the Bridges Project model that uses the three-leveled model in schools has produced positive results with improved school grades and attendance, improved emotional and behavior rating scale (Brock, 2011). Preventive Strategies As school administrators design the first tier of mental health services (a compact program of mental health prevention), schools should provide active participation of pediatricians, nurses, primary social services, community agencies, and parents. The health program should offer: 1) collective opportunities for pupils to build resiliencee and resistance to different stresses; 2) discipline and behavior plans; and 3) mental health syllabus (violence and bullying prevention), which are included into health education curricula (Bruns, Walrath, Glass-Siegel, Weist, 2004). Discipline and behavior plans should be implemented in schools for acquainting consistent behavior consequences and expectations of all participants. School management should teach administrators and educators the following basic principles: 1) the vital characteristics of behavior management techniques; 2) diagnosis of mental health disorders at an early age; 3) creating a secured environment for students. Some schools prepare school nurses, teachers, and other staff to volunteer in student health improvement programs after school hours. Support staff also leads health care providers to assist children to express themselves to their parents within a comfortable, safe, and secured environment. Schools should develop multidisciplinary support teams, which will include nurses, mental health specialists, school staff, and physicians to review and design intervention strategies for children experiencing mental problems at school, as well as at home (Hussey Guo, 2003). Conclusion School-based mental care programs are increasingly gaining significance in most schools of the United States. These mental health services improve accuracy of diagnosis and treatment of children. One of the key challenges to offering mental health services to children is gaining information regarding behavior of students in different environments. Schools serve as a wealth of opportunities to obtain information on how students cope with social and physical stresses, on how well they perform in the academic context, and how they develop interpersonal relationship with teachers, and peers. Several challenges have been observed in providing mental health care at school campuses. First, mental health services should be rendered under the strict guidance of medical experts, such as a general physician, mental health specialists, and social welfare organizations. Otherwise, mental health problems may not be effectively diagnosed and students in need of health care services may be neglected . Second, mental health care must be included in school syllabus so that these medical services become an integral part of education curriculum. Finally, since parents play a vital role in mental health intervention for students, creative strategies must be designed to attract their participation in medical services, not simply parental consent. Buy custom Comprehensive Mental Health Services essay