A national school-based mental health program that is now reaching almost one quarter of all elementary school students in Chile appears to have produced significant improvements in both behavioral and academic outcomes, such as attention problems and school attendance, among participating students. The results of a study by a team of Chilean and U.S. investigators appear in the October issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.
J. Michael Murphy, EdD, of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Department of Psychiatry, senior author of the JAACAP paper, notes that this is the first study to document the positive impact of a large-scale pediatric mental health intervention using validated mental health measures and real-world benchmarks like end-of-the-year promotion and school attendance. "These findings suggest that school-based mental health programs could play an important role in achieving better educational outcomes for whole countries as well as individual children. Our findings also provide evidence that non-pharmacological interventions can be effective. "
[For more of this story go to http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_...09/mgh-nsm092215.php]
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