The multiple-risk-factor intervention strategy resulted in a significant reduction in the risk of falling among elderly persons in the community. In addition, the proportion of persons who had the targeted risk factors for falling was reduced in the intervention group, as compared with the control group. Thus, risk-factor modification may partially explain the reduction in the risk of falling.

Despite schools increasingly adopting multitiered systems of support (MTSS) for prevention and intervention of mental health concerns, many are slow to adopt universal mental health screening (UMHS), a core MTSS feature, due to concerns about their limited capacity to meet the needs of all identified. In this study, we examined differences in the number and characteristics of students who would be identified for intervention services when UMHS in an MTSS were added to those students already receiving social, emotional, and behavioral supports. In a sample of 3,744 students in Grades 1 to 5 from six schools, 679 (18.1%) additional students were identified by screening, representing a 180.1% increase in students identified with behavioral risk or need for mental health interventions. Using a series of stepwise logistic regression analyses, we identified significant predictors of newly identified students including gender, number of office discipline referrals, and externalizing, internalizing, and adaptive behavior ratings. Findings are discussed in relation to opportunities for prevention and the systems needed in an MTSS to meet the needs of newly identified students.

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Since teachers play an instrumental role in identifying students with social-emotional or behavioral (SEB) concerns, there is a need to assess and improve teachers’ knowledge in relation to children’s mental health.  This study examines the psychometric properties of one such measure Teacher School Mental Health Literacy Survey (TSMHLS) within a sample of pre-service teachers (n = 38.) The survey assesses the mental health literacy of teachers as it relates to students and within the classroom context. Data analyses were run to explore the internal reliability, discriminant validity, and feasibility of the survey. Analyses indicate moderate to high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha=.743), providing psychometric support for the use of the TSMHLS with pre-service teachers. Pre-service teachers’ discrimination between clinical symptomology and typical development was significant, providing further support for the survey’s use in understanding pre-service teachers’ knowledge of SEB concerns. Finally, feasibility was assessed through average completion time for the online survey (24 minutes), and results indicate that the survey could be feasibly implemented during pre-service teacher training. These findings lend support to the TSMHLS as an appropriate measure to evaluate pre-service teachers’ knowledge of student mental health.

Approximately 80% of children with social, emotional, and behavioral challenges are not adequately identified, leading to a large gap in unmet mental health needs. The purpose of the MTSS-MH project is to identify the efficiency and acceptability of universal mental health screening in schools using screening to systematically identify all students’ behavioral and mental health needs. The Teacher Perceptions of Screening and Mental Health Practices Survey (TPSMHPS) was administered within the MTSS-MH project to assess each school’s organizational climate and teachers’ perceptions of how acceptable universal screening and their school’s utilization of it was. Data analyses were run in this validity study to measure the survey’s preliminary psychometric properties. The internal reliability of the survey was indicated moderate to high reliability (Cronbach’s alpha = 0.787). One-way ANOVAs were run to assess the survey’s ability to detect differences between schools on teachers’ mean responses about screening acceptability, intervention acceptability, and implementation of screening resources. Results indicate that the TPSMHPS survey is a valid measure of teachers’ perceptions of mental health screening, as it is shown to to have high internal consistency, however between school differences were not detected. Future studies should consider other statistical analyses to examine the survey’s sensitivity to between school differences to ensure the survey is a good measure of teacher perceptions.