Initial investigations of a multifactorial approach to the measurement of emotional abuse in dating relationships are presented. A set of 54 items was generated to assess 4 rationally derived subscales measuring Restrictive Engulfment, Hostile Withdrawal, Denigration, and Dominance / Intimidation. An exploratory factor analysis on reports of partner behavior by 157 female undergraduate students in dating relationships provided support for the hypothesized subscales. Denigration and Dominance/Intimidation had consistently higher correlations with physical aggression than did the other two forms of emotional abuse. Further evidence for discriminant and convergent validity was apparent in correlations with the circumplex scales of the Inventory of Interpersonal Problems, and with self-reported attachment variables. The results support the assessment of emotional abuse in dating relationships as a multifactorial construct.

Implementing social emotional learning (SEL) programs in school settings is a promising approach to promote critical social and emotional competencies for all students. However, there are several challenges to implementing manualized SEL programs in schools, including program cost, competing demands, and content that is predetermined and cannot be tailored to individual classroom needs. Identifying core components of evidence-based SEL programs may make it possible to develop more feasible approaches to implementing SEL in schools. The purpose of this study was to systematically identify the core components in evidence-based Elementary School SEL programs, using the five interrelated sets of competencies identified by the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) as an organizing framework. We present the components that were identified, and the rates at which each component was included in the sample of evidence-based SEL programs. The core components that occurred most frequently across programs were Social Skills (100% of programs), Identifying Others' Feelings (100% of programs), Identifying One's Own Feelings (92.3% of programs), and Behavioral Coping Skills/ Relaxation (91.7% of programs). These findings illustrate the feasibility of systematically identifying core components from evidence-based SEL programs, and suggest potential utility of developing and evaluating modularized SEL programs.

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Untreated mental health problems are among the most disabling, persistent, and costly health conditions. Because they often begin in childhood and continue into adulthood, there has been growing interest in preventive mental health programs for children. In recent years, several such programs have been implemented at regional, state, or national scale, and although many experimental studies have documented positive outcomes of individual programs, this article represents the first attempt to systematically compare the largest programs in terms of scope, scale, and dose. The school-based mental health programs discussed in this review appear to have reached more than 27 million children over the last decade, and many of these programs have collected systematic outcomes data. The role that such programs can play in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is a secondary focus of this article. Until recently, wide-scaled, preventive, mental health interventions for children have been studied almost exclusively in high-income countries even though around 80% of the global population of children reside in LMICs. Since a number of programs are now operating on a large scale in LMICs, it has become possible to consider child mental health programs from a more global perspective. With both the increasing diversity of countries represented and the growing scale of programs, data sets of increasing quality and size are opening up new opportunities to assess the degree to which preventive interventions for child mental health, delivered at scale, can play a role in improving health and other life outcomes.

As multitiered systems of support (MTSS) for improving student emotional/behavioral (EB) functioning are being scaled up nationally (Horner et al., 2014), there is a critical need to define how these approaches meet the needs of students presenting internalizing EB problems such as depression, anxiety, and trauma-related concerns. Contributing to the improvement of MTSS is the systematic joining of positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) and school mental health (SMH) services. A recently defined interconnected systems framework (ISF; Barrett, Eber, & Weist, 2013) provides explicit guidance on doing this work, and a national workgroup for ISF is exploring its implementation in sites around the country. The theme of improving prevention and intervention for youth with internalizing issues is a significant emphasis in this effort. However, many schools and collaborating partners from the mental health and other youth-serving systems struggle to develop multitiered programs for youth with internalizing challenges. The underlying tenets and approaches for addressing internalizing problem behavior differ from those that focus on improving more distinct externalizing behaviors such as noncompliance, disruptiveness, rule violation, aggression, attention problems, and acting out. The overall goal of this article is to build from important prior reviews (e.g., McIntosh, Ty, & Miller, 2014) and lessons being learned as the ISF is implemented in sites across the country to improve multitiered promotion/prevention, early intervention, and intervention for students presenting internalizing problems. Within MTSS efforts, school staff and community collaborators (as in the ISF) continue to struggle to implement programs for youth with internalizing problems. Objectives of this article are to review background factors limiting attention to internalizing issues within MTSS and to present recommendations for moving the field forward in improving practice, research, and policy on these issues, with particular attention paid to the ISF and its critical role in this agenda. There are three sections to the article.