Measuring behavior change in young children receiving intensive school‐based mental health services

An innovative urban school‐based mental health program was developed to treat the subset of elementary school‐referred children who are experiencing severe emotional and behavioral difficulties. The program served a group of 201 students and their families, referred from 15 elementary schools through a large urban school district in Ohio (K through fifth grade). The children in the sample are predominantly African‐American (N = 157, 78.1%), and male (N = 154, 76.6%), with an average age at admission of 9.23 years (SD = 1.75). Parents and teachers provided behavioral rating data using a standardized psychiatric assessment instrument (i.e., the Devereux Scales of Mental Disorders—DSMD). Results showed that at intake 68.7% of children scored above the clinical cutoff score of 60 on the conduct disorder subscale of the DSMD, with more than 40.8% of youth scoring 70 or higher. On the depression subscale 55.7% scored above the cutoff score, with slightly less than a third (30.8%) scoring 70 or higher. Hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) was used to measure longitudinal behavior change. Children evidenced statistically significant reductions in conduct disordered behavior ( p < .01), attention deficit/hyperactivity ( p < .05), and depressive symptomatology ( p < .01) over the course of approximately 1 year. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comm Psychol 31: 629–639, 2003.