From distal to proximal: routine educational data monitoring in school-based mental health

Abstract

Research and practice in school-based mental health (SBMH) typically include educational variables only as distal outcomes, resulting from improvements in mental health symptoms rather than directly from mental health intervention. Although sometimes appropriate, this approach also has the potential to inhibit the integration of mental health and schools. This paper applies an existing model of data-driven decision-making (Daleiden, E., & Chorpita, B.F. (2005). From data to wisdom: Quality improvement strategies supporting large-scale implementation of evidence based services. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 14, 329–349) to detail how SBMH can better integrate routine monitoring of school and academic outcomes into four evidence bases: general services research evidence, case histories, local aggregate and causal mechanisms. The importance of developing new consultation protocols specific to data-driven decision-making in SBMH as well as supportive infrastructure (e.g. measurement feedback systems) to support the collection and use of educational data is also described.

Keywords:

• data-driven decision-making
• school and academic data
• school-based mental health
• progress monitoring
• evidence-based practice

Acknowledgements

This publication was made possible, in part, by funding from grant number K08 MH095939, awarded to the first author from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).