ABSTRACT
About 17 percent of children in the U.S. suffer from mental illness according to epidemiological studies (National Research Council & Institute of Medicine, 2009; Roberts, Attkisson, & Rosenblatt, 1998). Thus, about 340 youth will display clinically significant mental health problems in a school that contains 2,000 students. Furthermore, in addition to being prevalent, mental health problems also exert a markedly negative impact on students’ functioning. A study by the World Health Organization indicates that mental health problems account for nearly half of all disabilities among individuals between the ages of 10 and 24 (Gore et al., 2011) and about 7.5 million U.S. children have been estimated to have an unmet mental health need (Kataoka, Zhang, & Wells, 2002).
