Breadcrumb
- Federal Resources
Federal Resources
Bureau of Justice Assistance Training and Technical Assistance
This resource provides technical assistance to practitioners in state, local, and tribal justice systems.
Gang Resistance and Education Program
The G.R.E.A.T. Program is a school-based, law enforcement officer-instructed classroom curriculum. With prevention as its primary objective, the program is intended as an immunization against delinquency, youth violence, and gang membership.
Why Youth Join Gangs
OJJDP, BJA, and the National Gang Center developed “Why Youth Join Gangs,” an online video that features (a) gang researchers and practitioners providing their perspectives on gang joining and (b) youth sharing their gang experiences. The video highlights risk factors that may play a role in a youth’s decision to join a gang and behaviors that might be observed when interacting with youth at high risk of joining a gang.
Parents’ Guide to Gangs: Now Available in Spanish
NGC has published a Spanish version of the Parents' Guide to Gangs. This resource is designed to provide parents with answers to common questions about gangs and to help them recognize and prevent gang involvement.
Resource: Redesigned National Gang Center Website
This redesigned website features new focus areas on criminal justice, communities and research, an inquiries section for quicker responses from staff, new forms to request technical assistance, the National Gang Center blog, and OJJDP Comprehensive Gang Model tools. Communities can utilize these resources in their gang prevention, intervention, and suppression efforts.
Share with Youth: A Roadmap to Behavioral Health: A Guide to Using Mental Health and Substance Use Disorder Services
This guide (PDF, 24 pages) can help people understand how to use health insurance coverage to improve their mental and physical health. It provides an eight step road map for understanding behavioral health, finding and accessing appropriate providers, and staying on the road to recovery.
Child Health USA
The Child Health USA Databook is an annual report of the health status, well-being and service needs of America's children and youth. Coalitions, program planners and policy makers can identify national trends by examining and comparing data from one year to the next. Indicators for youth, or adolescents, cover multiple issues, including childbearing, substance abuse, violence, mental health treatment, and mortality from traffic and firearms injuries. The section, Population Characteristics, provides information about poverty status and school dropouts. Each topic includes a written summary and at least one graph that clearly depicts key statistical facts.
Health Center Program Technical Assistance
This resource provides technical assistance to health centers. The Bureau of Primary Health Care has developed partnerships with state, regional and other national organizations to provide:
- Training and technical assistance on fiscal and program management
- Operational and administrative support
- Program development/analysis
- Primary care/clinical care development and operations
- Support to meet the needs of special populations
- Support to develop and implement health and other information technology systems
Director’s Blog: What Caused This to Happen?
Written by NIMH Director Dr. Thomas Insel, this blog post explains the mixture of genetic and environmental factors that underly mental illness and cites recent research that suggests “bad luck” may play a role in the development of psychopathology.
Mental Health: A Report of the Surgeon General
This Report of the Surgeon General on Mental Health is the product of a collaboration between two federal agencies, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the National Institutes of Health. The report provides an overview of mental health as well as a section targeted at children’s mental health. Sections of this report include information on interventions and service delivery.
NIMH Strategic Plan Aims to Focus, Accelerate Mental Health Research
NIMH has issued a new Strategic Plan for Research, which updates the strategic objectives of its 2008 plan, with a focus on balancing the need for long-term investments in basic research with urgent mental health needs. The plan includes four strategic priorities which will guide the institute’s research for the next five years:
- Define the mechanisms of complex behaviors
- Chart mental illness trajectories to determine when, where, and how to intervene
- Strive for prevention and cures
- Strengthen the public health impact of NIMH-supported research
Scientists Spot Gene Tied to Severe Autism
In a recent study, researchers claim to have discovered a new genetic cause of autism, singling out a rare gene mutation. The gene, CTNND2, provides instructions for making a protein called delta-catenin, which plays a crucial role in the nervous system. Researchers found that a group of girls with severe autism carried CTNND2 mutations that appeared to reduce the effectiveness of delta-catenin, potentially affecting their neurological development.
The Anatomy of NIMH Funding
In response to calls for transparency, this blog post and corresponding white paper (PDF, 13 pages) written by NIMH director Thomas Insel provide insight into the NIMH budget, including what is funded, who is funded, and how funding decisions are made.
Targeting Suicide
Written by NIH Director Thomas Insel in light of the recent Germanwings crash, this blog post describes the importance of investing in research related to suicide, the tenth leading cause of death in the United States.
Boys More Likely to Have Antipsychotics Prescribed, Regardless of Age
New research funded by NIMH analyzed antipsychotic prescription data between 2006-2010. The data show that, in children ages 1-6, boys were more than twice as likely as girls to receive an antipsychotic prescription. This pattern held true for boys and girls ages 7-12, before narrowing for those ages 13-18, and finally becoming more comparable for young men and women ages 19-24.
Share with Youth: Teen Depression
Youth-serving professionals can use this resource, developed for teens, to educate young people about depression. It contains information about the signs and symptoms of depression, places to turn to for help, effective treatments for depression, steps teens can take to feel better, and the impact depression can have on relationships.
Director’s Blog: The Brain’s Critical Balance
Written by NIMH Director Thomas Insel, this blog post highlights one of early projects of the BRAIN Initiative, launched to support scientists as they conduct research on the brain, consciousness, and behavior. This project involves scientists at NIMH and the University of Maryland who are trying to understand how the activity of individual neurons integrates into larger patterns of brain activity
Webinar Recording: Bullying Prevention and Suicide Prevention for Schools
The recording is now available for the webinar, Bullying Prevention and Suicide Prevention for Schools: A Digital Approach From SAMHSA, presented by SAMHSA and the American School Health Association. The webinar provided an overview of the risk and impact of bullying and suicide in school-aged children and highlighted the connection between these public health issues and the "whole child" concept. The webinar also showcased SAMHSA's mobile applications, KnowBullying and Suicide Safe, and other key tools to promote bullying prevention and suicide prevention in schools.
Recent Event: Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder
This Twitter chat featured Dr. Ellen Leibenluft, Chair of the Section on Bipolar Spectrum Disorder and expert on severe irritability in children, who answered questions on disruptive mood dysregulation disorder submitted by Twitter users.
Resource: Child and Adolescent Mental Health
This web portal provides information on mental health conditions and disorders among children and teens, including warning signs, latest news, videos, hotlines, and clinical trials.
Report: Testing Interpretation Bias Training (IBT)
This report describes a new, large-scale study that will test IBT, a computer game designed to diminish the tendency of children with disruptive mood dysregulation disorder (DMDD) to view ambiguous faces as angry. This study will also test cognitive behavioral therapy in conjunction with IBT in an effort to establish the first non-drug interventions for those with DMDD.
Depression and College Students
This webpage provides answers to college students’ questions about depression. It addresses the types, signs and symptoms, and treatment of depression, as well as co-occurring disorders and where to find help. The webpage also features information on suicide, including the warning signs and what a person should do if they or someone they care about is considering suicide.
Resource: Mental Health Needs of Youth
This webpage, developed by the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability, provides multiple resources on the mental health needs of youth, especially as they relate to employment. Youth service practitioners can use this information to better understand the needs of youth, and policymakers can utilize it in their work to address system and policy obstacles and improve service delivery systems for youth with mental health needs.
Promise Neighborhoods
To address the challenges faced by students living in communities of concentrated poverty, Promise Neighborhoods grantees and their partner organizations will plan to provide services from early learning to college and career, including programs to improve the health, safety, and stability of neighborhoods, and boost family engagement in student learning.