How to use this site?

Please use this website as a up-to-date resource for accessing, coordinating, and researching resources for behavioral health in our schools.

What is behavioral health?

School-based behavioral health support systems promote the academic, social and emotional well-being of all students through tiered services that might vary across school environments: classrooms, small groups, individual interventions, programs for after school, working with community agencies, etc. These services and programs are aimed at meeting the overall social-emotional and mental health needs of students so that they may thrive and learn in schools. Behavioral health services in schools can also help to bridge families and students to community resources. 

Providing a continuum of school mental and behavioral health services is critical to effectively addressing the breadth of students’ needs. Comprehensive mental health services are most effective when provided through a multitiered system of supports (MTSS). MTSS encompasses the continuum of need, enabling schools to promote mental wellness for all students, identify and address problems before they escalate or become chronic, and provide increasingly intensive, data-driven services for individual students as needed. Access to adequate staffing of school-employed mental health professionals, like school psychologists, is essential to the quality and effectiveness of these services.