Introduction

Many current systems of mental health care fall short of meeting the needs of America’s children. All too often, mental health programs lack evidence to support their effectiveness, fail to address the multidimensional nature of serious clinical problems, exclude the natural ecologies of the home, school and neighborhood, don’t integrate systems of care, and are extraordinarily expensive. We conceived this project, Innovative Mental Health Interventions for Children: Programs That Work, while working on an invited paper on school-based mental health programs in the United States that proposed a tripartite model of mental health interventions (Pfeiffer & Reddy, 1998). One dimension of our tripartite model, Spectrum of Mental Health Interventions, includes three levels of preventive interventions (universal, selective and indicated), as well as treatment, maintenance and health promotion/wellness interventions.