Publications

This collection of articles from the National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth analyzes some of the most prominent mental health issues facing at-risk youth in order to provide youth workers with insight into the prevention and treatment of mental health challenges. Post-traumatic stress disorder, the risks and uses of psychotropic medications, and postpartum depression in teen mothers are discussed. 

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.

This report, from the Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, provides comprehensive estimates of the number of children and youth in the United States living with specific mental disorders and outlines federal efforts to monitor the prevalence of these disorders and the impact they have on the mental health of young people

In this blog post, Laura Green Zeilinger, USICH Executive Director, illustrates the experience of family homelessness and the services and supports that can be effective in helping families, including coordinated assessment, transitional housing, and rapid re-housing. 

The National Clearinghouse on Families and Youth released a Q&A with Shannon Minter, legal director at the National Center for Lesbian Rights, featuring tips for working specifically with transgender and gender non-conforming youth.

This compendium provides research and prevention specialists with a set of tools to evaluate programs to prevent youth violence. The compendium includes more than 100 measures, mostly focused on individuals' violence-related attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

This document provides researchers, prevention specialists, and health educators with tools to measure a range of bullying experiences: bully perpetration, bully victimization, bully-victim experiences, and bystander experiences. Some researchers continue to examine the risk and protective factors associated with bullying experiences. Others are working to design, implement, and evaluate bully prevention interventions aimed at reducing bully victimization and perpetration, as well as increasing prosocial bystander involvement in bullying situations.

This resource from the Children’s Bureau  provides information to youth in foster care on psychotropic medication, and the role they can have in their overall health care, as well as alternate approaches to treatment.

As part of her “Let’s Move” program, First Lady Michelle Obama has created a new website, “Let’s Move Active Schools,” where schools can identify their fitness needs, set fitness goals and measure progress, and celebrate successes. The website also provides information about grants and resources, and profiles of schools that have successfully used physical activity to help students thrive. Learn more.

The National Leadership Summit on School Discipline and Climate provided an opportunity for state and local teams of educators, judicial and court staff, child welfare stakeholders, law enforcement personnel, community members, and youth to share best practices, deepen partnerships, and develop concrete steps to advance school discipline and juvenile justice reform in their communities. Materials from this Summit — including presentations, resources, worksheets, and state and local data — are available online.