Schools are experiencing high demand for providing social interventions for students with high functioning autism spectrum disorders (HF-ASD). Students with HF-ASD face unique challenges with social skills and social relationships. Without intervention in the school setting, these social difficulties can interfere significantly with students’ ability to engage in and learn at school. Although social goals are frequently included as part of Individualized Education Plans, few social interventions are available to schools that are both evidence-based and feasible to implement in an educational setting. Further, educators would greatly benefit from tools that allow them to simultaneously implement a social intervention and measure its impact on students’ social functioning.

Elementary school is a time of tremendous growth and development in students’ social skills and peer relations. Students who are able to establish and maintain positive peer relations are more successful in school (including higher levels of achievement) and better able to cope with stressful life events, such as poverty. In contrast, students who have difficulty navigating the social developmental shifts of elementary school are substantially more likely to experience academic failure, behavioral problems, and emotional difficulties.

Social skills group therapy has been shown to be effective for improving children's peer relations, social behavior, and emotional adjustment. However, interventions that include a family component may help further improve outcomes for youth. The Parent Guide to S.S.GRIN (Parent Guide) is a parent intervention program that parallels an established child-focused intervention (S.S.GRIN). Parent Guide and is designed to teach and reinforce within the home environment the same social skills and concepts that children learn in their intervention.

Perceptions of a closed school community have been found to create or exacerbate problems with academic performance, educational aspirations, and behavioral-emotional functioning for Latino youth. Intervention and prevention research suggests social acceptance of Latino students and integration into the school community are key environmental factors that promote positive functioning. Cultural Heritage Stories for Kids: Latino Series (CHSK:LS) is a school-based cultural heritage curriculum for upper elementary school students that includes a story library of traditional and acculturation stories from different Latino cultures (e.g., Mexican American, Puerto Rican, Cuban), presented by professional Latino storytellers in both English and Spanish. CHSK:LS will provide school professionals with an innovative, effective universal classroom intervention specifically designed to celebrate Latino cultural heritage, promote understanding of cultural diversity in the classroom, and engender a more integrated, accepting classroom environment.

During adolescence, youth undergo pivotal biological, emotional, and cognitive shifts. Along with these immense internal shifts, adolescent peer relations become increasingly complex (e.g., cliques) and challenging (e.g., peer pressure) and, as teens struggle to define their young adult role, relationships within the family can become increasingly strained and conflictual. When youth experience difficulties navigating the transitions of adolescence, they are at heightened risk for developing a variety of mental health disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety), maladaptive behavior patterns (e.g., self-destructive or risk-taking behaviors) and academic failure. Parents are often at a loss for how to communicate with teens and lack strategies for how to help them through the turmoil of adolescence. The resulting elevated levels of parental stress not only negatively impacts adolescent adjustment, but also places parents at heightened risk for their own mental health problems, particularly depression.

The need to improve patient adherence to treatment protocol is immense, both for improved individual patient outcomes and advancement of scientific treatment knowledge. Past interventions to improve adherence have had mixed results, with the most success stemming from those that were very complex and costly. Convenient, cost effective tools to increase clinician/researcher awareness of adherence while creating minimal patient burden are needed. Self-monitoring (SM) is increasingly used across diverse medical fields as both a clinical tool and research method to gather critical adherence data from patients. SM presents myriad advantages over traditional data collection methods including lower recall bias, increased generalizability, and lower patient burden. However, traditional paper-and-pencil methods of SM are too complex and labor intensive for patients to complete easily, resulting in poor compliance and inaccurate, low quality data. In order to best sample patients’ behaviors and experiences in real time and in natural environments, computerized SM technologies (C-SM) for mobile devices hold tremendous promise, with patients reporting them to be more convenient, less time consuming, easier to use, and more motivating to complete.

In the United States, approximately 15 million youth have a mental, emotional, or behavioral disorder and schools are the primary setting within which children and adolescents receive mental health (MH) services. The effectiveness of school MH programs has been repeatedly demonstrated for a wide array of behavioral and emotional disorders, including suicidality, substance abuse, ADHD, and mood, anxiety and conduct disorders. Unfortunately, however, despite gains in the identification of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) and a push for accountability in the education system, EBIs are rarely used in everyday practice by schools. Further, EBIs proven effective under strict research conditions often fail to achieve their intended outcomes when delivered in the “real world”. A growing body of literature demonstrates that the quality of implementation is directly related to the likelihood an EBI will be adopted and sustained within the school setting as well as the strength of its treatment effects. Increasing the extent to which school MH EBIs are used and implemented with high quality could significantly impact the MH of the nation’s youth.

Social skills deficits are often considered the hallmark of autism. Individuals with high functioning autism and Asperger’s Syndrome typically have pervasive social skill deficits and poor relationships with their peers, despite relatively intact cognitive functioning. Improvement in the area of social functioning can be very challenging for these children. Existing social skills interventions, in particular programs that have undergone efficacy testing, are lacking. At the same time, the federal government and the Autism Society of America report that the development of research-based materials to meet the needs of autistic children is a high priority.

Children with high functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD) are at heightened risk for a wide range of social relationship problems. Specialists in the field of autism suggest the social skill deficits experienced by people with HFASD are the most difficult aspect of the disorder to overcome. S.S.GRIN-HFA (Social Skills Group Intervention for High Functioning Autism) builds upon the solid foundation of an existing evidence-based curriculum for social skills training (S.S.GRIN) with key alterations to make the training specifically applicable for children with HFASD. S.S.GRIN-HFA provides mental health professionals with a unique multi-modal, multi-component intervention program to build the social skills and social relationships of children ages eight through twelve with HFASD. S.S.GRIN-HFA integrates a structured skill-based curriculum with video and graphic materials that not only target specific skill sets, but also bridge the intervention setting with home efforts to promote social functioning.

Children who are able to establish and maintain positive peer relations during the elementary school years are more successful in school and better able to cope with stressful life events.In contrast, children who have difficulty navigating these social developmental shifts are substantially more likely to experience academic failure, behavioral problems, and emotional difficulties. The recognition of interconnections between social and academic functioning has led to the inclusion of social goals in many Individualized Education Plans, Student Support Team strategies, and overall school improvement plans. However, few proven tools exist to help educators implement social interventions and simultaneously measure their impact. Given the current educational trend toward Response to Intervention models (in which data collection is a central component), the development of tools that can assist teachers and support staff with student-based data collection is imperative.

Recent reports indicate both marked increases in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and a significant need for effective interventions to minimize the disabilities associated with ASD. This need is especially great for children with higher functioning ASD who are generally included in regular education classrooms but struggle significantly with social difficulties. Students with high functioning ASD face unique challenges with social skills and social relationships. They are often seen as socially immature and odd and are at high risk for rejection and victimization by peers. Without intervention, these social difficulties and associated mental health problems may interfere significantly with students’ functioning at school. Social goals are frequently included as part of students’ Individualized Education Plans; however, few scientifically-verified treatments are available for use by school professionals. Given the current educational trend toward Response to Intervention models in which classroom-based data collection is a central component, tools that assist teachers and support staff with data collection and student progress monitoring are greatly needed.

Intervention researchers possess a vast amount of experiential knowledge that is often untapped. While research findings on treatment outcomes and efficacy are published through journals, books, and online distribution centers, process data regarding study implementation efforts are typically lost. As a result, investigators must generate their own solutions to common issues each time a study is begun. For larger, more complex longitudinal studies, the investigator is often inundated with an extensive set of implementation issues needing resolution. If the knowledge base of experienced investigators could be effectively tapped, the benefits to the advancement of science would be immense.

Intervention researchers possess a vast, untapped well of experiential knowledge. While research findings on treatment outcomes and efficacy are published through journals, books, and on line, operational experience (the how-to knowledge) is typically lost. As a result, the same set of operational issues must be independently processed by each investigator embarking on an intervention study. The intervention field is increasingly moving towards larger, longer, more complex designs, particularly multi-site studies, and investigators are often inundated with operational issues needing resolution. For researchers who wish to transition, for example, from single-site to multi-site or from efficacy to effectiveness, these operational issues can present a significant barrier to the development and implementation of more complex intervention designs. If the knowledge base of experienced investigators could be effectively tapped and shared, the benefits to the advancement of science would be immense. The purpose of the proposed Phase II project was to continue the research and development of a web-based operational archive, 4researchers.org, to disseminate operational experience via the Internet to other investigators.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, people of Latino origin constitute the largest minority group in the nation, with predictions that 24% of the U.S. total population will be of Latino origin by 2050. Numerous studies have demonstrated that Latino children experience significant behavioral health disparities, including academic and social difficulties, compared to non-Latino white children. Culturally-relevant programs are needed to decrease behavioral health disparities among Latino youth. Interventions that celebrate Latino cultural heritage, promote acceptance of diversity, and educate students about similarities among cultures can effectively engender an integrated accepting school environment, thereby fostering behavioral health benefits.

As children enter preschool and begin to navigate social situations outside the home, problem behaviors and related social difficulties may be more apparent. 3-C ISD's S.S.GRIN-EC (Social Skills Group Intervention for Early Childhood) is a small group social skills training program designed to enhance the social skills, emotional competencies and social relationships of young children. S.S.GRIN-EC promotes social and emotional functioning through a skill-based curriculum that includes in-session activities, multi-media resources, and parent handouts that bridge the intervention setting with home efforts.

National survey data suggest the prevalence of problem behaviors in young children is between 10-25%. As children enter preschool and begin to navigate social situations outside the home, problem behaviors interfere with social development placing children at risk for problematic peer relations and delayed social skills. Without intervention, social and behavioral problems tend to persist and even escalate over time and, in turn, have a tremendous impact on the development of child psychopathology.

Decades of research indicate that social-behavioral deficits negatively affect adjustment and place children at increased risk for a myriad of later negative outcomes including depression, substance abuse, and delinquency. Without intervention, social-behavioral problems tend to persist and escalate over time which, in turn, may have a tremendous impact on mental health. Social skills training (SST) is supported as an efficacious method for significantly improving children's peer relations, social behavior, and emotional adjustment and reducing risk of developmental psychopathology. Further, the efficacy of SST interventions is enhanced when training extends outside a treatment setting with practice opportunities.

Peer problems have been repeatedly related to a number of concurrent adjustment problems (e.g., disruptiveness, loneliness, academic failure) and later negative outcomes for youth (e.g., suicide, dropping out of school, criminality, drug use, and mental health problems). The actions of aggressive and antisocial youth can incur significant costs to society. Providing parents of adolescents with an effective way to help their teens build social skills and improve peer relations, as well as their ability to cope with social stressors, will improve youths’ quality of life and help offset the development of more serious maladjustment.

Over the past ten years, there has been a significant increase in the number of women and persons of color entering research careers related to mental health intervention, prevention, and services research. However, there has been relatively little growth in the number of women and persons of color awarded advanced programmatic grants or appointed to executive academic positions in the mental health interventions and services sciences. In order to be successful in these endeavors, junior and mid-level scientists need to blend specific scientific/technical knowledge and skills with executive leadership skills tailored to the specific needs of mental health interventions and services researchers.

This project supports the continued development and testing of online and in-person training and support services to further executive leadership skills and career development in child and adolescent mental health intervention and services research fields, particularly for scientists who are women and/or people of color.

Problematic peer relations, particularly when chronic, can have a tremendous impact on children's functioning and mental health. Decades of research indicate that peer rejection and victimization negatively affect adjustment and place children at increased risk of a myriad of later negative outcomes . In contrast, positive social relationships can serve as a protective factor promoting positive adjustment. Prevention and treatment research supports the use of social problem solving programs for improving children's peer relations, social behavior, and emotional adjustment. Research shows that multi-component intervention efforts that target both the school and home environments are more effective than focusing exclusively on either domain.

There is a need for cultural education programs to help decrease academic and behavioral health disparities and increase cultural pride and positive outcomes for African American youth. The Cultural Heritage Stories for Kids: African American series (CHSK: African American) product is a school-based curriculum that focuses on African American heritage and culture. Designed for children in grades 3-5, CHSK: African American features professional African American storytellers with stories captured on a DVD, accompanying lessons scripts for teachers and classroom activities.

The quality of a child’s mental health and social functioning are highly interconnected. A number of childhood psychiatric disorders include social skill deficits or restricted social relations as a key diagnostic feature. Research supports the significant and unique contribution of social problems in the emergence of a myriad of later negative outcomes, including heightened risk for psychiatric disorders and use of mental health services. Mental health problems and social relations can influence one another over time, with negative functioning in one area fostering worsening functioning in the other area. This cycle can be ameliorated, if not broken, with the application of targeted, structured, cognitive-behavioral skills training interventions and intervention efficacy is enhanced when training extends to multiple settings and includes practice outside of the treatment sessions.

Problematic relationships with peers, particularly when chronic, can have a tremendous impact on children's functioning and mental health. Prevention and treatment research supports the use of social skills group therapy for improving children's peer relationships, social behavior, and emotional adjustment. However, focusing exclusively on the child is not as effective as multi-component interventions targeting both the child and home environment. Independently, parent training promotes positive role models and support for social goals at home.

Problematic peer relations, particularly when chronic, can have a tremendous impact on children's functioning and mental health. Decades of research indicate that peer rejection and victimization negatively affect adjustment and place children at increased risk for a myriad of negative outcomes, whereas positive social relationships can serve as a protective factor promoting positive adjustment. Prevention and treatment research supports the use of social skills group therapy for improving children's peer relations, social behavior, and emotional adjustment. However, multi-component intervention efforts that target both the child and the home environment may be more effective.

A vast health disparity exists in which African American youth are significantly more likely to both exhibit antisocial behavior and to be the victim of others’ antisocial acts. Unfortunately, there is a tremendous lack of culturally sensitive, evidence-based interventions to combat the specific risk factors that lead to antisocial behavior for African American youth. In order to effectively combat the development of antisocial behavior among youth, cultural factors must be strategically and purposefully incorporated into program designs.

Black children and families possess extensive social, behavioral, and emotional strengths, yet Black youth are disproportionately at risk for developing social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties. Few culturally-sensitive, evidence-based intervention programs exist to address social, behavioral, and emotional concerns specific to Black youth. Celebrating the Strengths of Black Youth (CSBY) is a small group intervention program designed to reinforce Black children’s existing strengths and to assist them in developing new strengths, including positive cultural attitudes.

Social interactions are laden with emotionally charged information and individuals who lack emotional intelligence skills can have difficulty negotiating interpersonal situations. For children, limited emotional intelligence impacts their social relationships with the peer group and can result in negative social experiences. Decades of research in developmental psychopathology support the significant and unique contribution of social problems in the emergence of negative outcomes, including heightened risk for mental health problems. Research shows that emotional intelligence skills can be targeted and bolstered through the use of group intervention. Further, the efficacy of skill building interventions is enhanced when training extends to multiple settings (e.g., intervention setting and home) and practice outside of the treatment sessions is included.

Social interactions are laden with emotionally charged information and individuals who lack emotional intelligence skills can have difficulty negotiating interpersonal situations. For children, limited emotional intelligence impacts their social relationships with the peer group and can result in negative social experiences. Decades of research in developmental psychopathology support the significant and unique contribution of social problems in the emergence of negative outcomes, including risk for mental health problems. Research shows that emotional intelligence skills can be targeted and bolstered through group interventions and that interventions are enhanced when training extends to multiple settings (e.g., intervention setting and home) and practice outside of the treatment sessions is included.

Problematic peer relations, particularly when chronic, can have a tremendous impact on children’s functioning and mental health. Interpersonal aggression is a substantial peer problem among our youth. A history of aggressive behavior with peers is associated with a myriad of later negative outcomes, including delinquency and criminality. Intervention research supports the use of social skills training for decreasing aggression and antisocial behavior problems in aggressive youth as well as for improving their peer relations and social behavior. The primary aim of this project is to develop a new social skills intervention, entitled Project Forward (PF), for use with Middle and High school students. PF will build on an established group social skills intervention, S.S.GRIN (Social Skills GRoup INtervention; DeRosier, 2002a) that has been particularly successful in working with aggressive elementary students. PF will not only extend S.S.GRIN to older students, but also incorporate innovative treatment strategies so that PF will offer professionals a significant advancement over what is currently available for use with this population.

Problematic peer relations including interpersonal aggression can have a tremendous impact on children’s functioning and mental health. Intervention research supports the use of social skills training for decreasing aggression and antisocial behavior problems in youth as well as for improving their peer relations and social behavior. The primary goal of this Phase I project was to develop a prototype intervention derived from an existing evidence-based intervention (S.S.GRIN) that was adapted to meet the needs of older and more aggressive youth. Feasibility testing conducted with school and community mental health counselors indicated very positive ratings of the materials including manual, session content, and handouts. Results also provided useful feedback to guide further development.

In the study of children's peer relationships, decades of research have supported sociometric peer nomination methods as a reliable and accurate means of identifying peer problems. Problematic relationships with peers, particularly when chronic, can have a tremendous impact on children's functioning and mental health. More accurate identification of peer problems will enable schools to take proactive steps to intervene before problems become chronic and intractable. Unfortunately, peer nomination methods for data collection and data entry have traditionally been cumbersome and labor and time intensive. Sociometric analyses have been accomplished through highly complicated statistical programs. These requirements create such barriers that only trained peer relationship researchers have been able to utilize peer sociometric methodology.

Quality implementation of evidence-based interventions increases the likelihood that these interventions will be used effectively in community mental health settings. 3-C ISD's web-based dissemination toolbox (WDT) is a tool designed to support quality implementation of mental health EBIs. The WDT will decrease costs to both mental health settings and intervention developers, enhance implementation quality, and increase dissemination of EBIs into everyday practice.

Schools are a primary setting for the prevention, early identification and treatment of mental health disorders. Multiple psychological interventions for mental health problems in children and youth have established efficacy in research settings. However, empirically-based mental health interventions (EBIs) are rarely used in everyday practice in schools, affecting the quality of services provided to children. In instances in which EBIs are delivered in schools, they often fail to achieve the outcomes that were demonstrated in the research setting. A growing body of literature indicates the quality of EBI implementation is directly related to the likelihood that the EBI will be adopted and sustained within a school-based setting as well as the strength of the EBI treatment effects on youth outcomes. Quality implementation refers to the degree to which an intervention is delivered as intended, i.e., with fidelity to the treatment model. Three key areas have been found to directly impact the quality of EBI implementation: (1) training support for providers (including on-going implementation assistance); (2) structured, user-friendly resource materials; and (3) accountability tools for monitoring, tracking, and reporting fidelity to core intervention features.

A large and growing scientific base demonstrates that when evidence-based interventions (EBI) are implemented, substantial treatment benefits are apparent for youth across a wide range of clinical disorders. However, many interventions proven effective under strict research conditions fail to achieve their intended outcomes when delivered in the real world. The absence of documented outcome variables and proof of accurate intervention application (i.e., treatment fidelity) undermines conclusions about the relation between treatment and behavior change. The strength of treatment outcomes is directly related to quality of the intervention implementation. If an EBI is implemented with high quality, significant positive treatment outcomes are likely. In contrast, poor implementation substantially undermines the effectiveness of an EBI. Further, the fidelity with which the intervention is delivered is crucial not only for the providers’ ability to attribute changes in treatment outcomes to the evidence-based intervention, but also for the intervention’s diffusion and dissemination in mental health settings.

This project supported the development and feasibility testing of a website prototype for archiving and linking DSIR-supported training, educational, and career development programs in child and adolescent mental health intervention and services research.

There is a critical need to develop well-tested, researcher-approved web-based tools that will support clinical, social, and behavioral scientists. This Research Implementation Management System (RIMS) will offer an integrated suite of tools for the many tasks required to conduct research with human participants, including recruitment, screening and randomization, human participant protections, measure construction, data collection and tracking, and database management.

This project supports full development and testing of a website for archiving and linking training, educational, and career development programs in child and adolescent mental health intervention and services research.