The Educator's Guide to Mental Health Issues in the Classroom - Softcover

9781557666703: The Educator's Guide to Mental Health Issues in the Classroom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557666709 ISBN 13: 9781557666703

Publisher: Brookes Publishing, 2004

An estimated 20% of students have an emotional, behavioral, or mental disorder. Teachers are often the first to notice these problems — and with this reader-friendly guide, they'll have the information they need to help create effective learning environments for children and adolescents and collaborate effectively with mental health providers. Along with a detailed overview of the mental health system and the different types of mental health professionals, education professionals will get separate chapters on 11 specific mental health issues, each describing

characteristics of the disorder

ways the disorder might be manifested

the process for diagnosing the disorder

types of intervention and treatment

practical guidelines on working with students who have the disorder

Educators will also find specific strategies for building collaborative partnerships with mental health professionals and families; case studies illustrating successful collaboration; and appendices of definitions, DSM-IV-TR criteria for various disorders discussed in the book, common medications used to treat mental health disorders, and support organizations.

Equally useful for preservice and in-service general and special educators — and for the mental health providers who partner with them — this important book will prepare readers to understand students with mental health disorders and help improve their chances for social and academic success.

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About the Author:

Frank M. Kline, Ph.D., is Professor and Associate Dean and Director of Teacher Education at Seattle Pacific University in Washington State. He has served at Seattle Pacific University for a number of years in a variety of positions, all related to the preparation of educators. Prior to his positions at Seattle Pacific University, Dr. Kline was Assistant Professor of Special Education at Wichita State University in Kansas. Dr. Kline obtained his doctoral degree from The University of Kansas, where he was a research assistant at the Institute for Research in Learning Disabilities. Dr. Kline has also taught students with learning disabilities at the elementary and secondary levels. Dr. Kline's research interests include collaboration between professional communities. He has written about and surveyed the actual and potential relationships among school personnel, physicians, and mental health workers. Dr. Kline has also written extensively on a number of topics related to educational systems change, learning disabilities, and overall special education issues. Dr. Kline is an active member of the Learning Disabilities Association of America. He serves on the organization's Conference Program Committee and Professional Advisory Board and is co-editor of its publication Learning Disabilities: A Multidisciplinary Journal. In addition, Dr. Kline was co-editor of The Educator's Guide to Medical Issues in the Classroom (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2001).

Larry B. Silver, M.D., is a child and adolescent psychiatrist in private practice in the Washington, D.C., area. He is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington, D.C. Prior to his current work, Dr. Silver was Acting Director and Deputy Director of the National Institute of Mental Health. Previously, he was Professor of Psychiatry, Professor of Pediatrics, and Chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at RobertWood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey. For more than 30 years, Dr. Silver's research, clinical, and teaching interests have focused on the psychological, social, and family impacts of a group of related, neurologically based disorders: learning disabilities, language disabilities, sensory integration dysfunction, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Among his more than 150 publications are the books The Misunderstood Child: Understanding and Coping with Your Child's Learning Disabilities, Third Edition (Times Books, 1998), Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: A Clinical Guide to Diagnosis and Treatment for Health and Mental Health Professionals, Third Edition (American Psychiatric Publishing, 2004), and Dr. Larry Silver's Advice to Parents on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Second Edition (Times Books, 1999). Dr. Silver also was co-editor of The Educator's Guide to Medical Issues in the Classroom (Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co., 2001). Dr. Silver is an active member of the Learning Disabilities Association of America, serving as President of the organization. In 1992, he received the Learning Disabilities Association Award, the organization's highest award, for outstanding leadership in the field of learning disabilities. In 1996, he received the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry's Berman Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the study and treatment of learning disabilities.

Excerpted from Chapter 1 of The Educator's Guide to Medical Issues in the Classroom, by Frank M. Kline, Ph.D., Larry B. Silver, M.D., & Steven C. Russell, Ph.D.

The intent of this book is to assist educators in providing the best possible education by equipping them to communicate clearly and effectively with those in the medical profession. Although in decline over the last few decades, the relationship between medicine and learning actually predates the formation of education as a field of study. From the very beginning of schooling, education and medicine have been inextricably intertwined. Many of the earliest studies of education were conducted by physicians who understood the impact that one's physical being can have on one's learning. Hinschelwood's studies of "word blindness" are an excellent example. Basic concepts of education such as ability were also often explored in medicine before educators began to struggle with these ideas.

Since education has been publicly organized and made available to all, the relationship between learning and medicine has become more confused. No longer does the locus of study of these two areas lie within one person or even within one field; no longer are physicians also educators. Other factors also contribute to the general decline of the relationship between the medical and educational communities. First, in its desire to be recognized as its own field, education may have divorced itself from its roots in psychology and medicine too completely. Second, various people discontented with the efficacy of education have called for a narrower focus in the field. This was once called "back to the basics." The call in the late 1990s for "competency-based education" might also refocus education in a narrower vein. As a result, areas not seen as integral to a narrowly focused mission of education (i.e., teaching the basics, meeting the competencies) are often jettisoned. Other forces have also conspired to pry apart a formerly close relationship between medicine and education. For example, educators and those in the medical community do not have routine conversations; even the position of school nurse is frequently being eliminated in favor of more teachers (Adelman, 1998; Cranston et al., 1988; Hardiman, Curcio, & Fortune 1998; Marshall & Wuori, 1985).

The reemergence of special education as a mandated field in the early 1970s has resulted in a renewed discussion regarding collaboration between schools and various other community entities, including the medical community. Efforts to collaborate have risen out of the desire to better serve those in need and to use the resources of the community efficiently and effectively. These efforts were largely initiated by the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (PL 94-142), passed to ensure fair and appropriate public education for all individuals. The physician's role was not specifically delineated in this law. Collaboration between medical professionals and educators on behalf of the same students, however, is often beneficial to all involved parties. The next section briefly explores some difficult terms related to collaboration. The remainder of the chapter covers the role of official policy (in the form of legislation, case law, and guidelines of various professional organizations) in developing relationships between education and medical communities, describes several models used for collaboration, and shares a brief description of the rest of this book.

TERMS

The Oxford American Dictionary defines collaboration as to "work in partnership" (Ehrlich, Flexner, Carruth, & Hawkins, 1980, p. 122). The Oxford American Dictionary provides two definitions for integrate: 1) to "combine or form (a part or parts) into a whole" and 2) to "bring or come into equal membership of a community" (Ehrlich et al., 1980, p. 344). The Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors(1995) gives no definition or scope note for the term collaboration, but it refers the user to the definition of cooperation. The definition of cooperation found in the scope note is the "act of working together towards a common goal." Following this definition, however, the reader is instructed to use more specific terms for purposes of searching the database (p. 66). Integrated services is included in this list of more specific terms. The scope note for integrated services provides the following definition: "collaborations among the education, health and social service sectors to provide a school-based or school-linked comprehensive, coordinated continuum of preventive and prescriptive student and family services — usually for persons considered to be at-risk" (p. 155).

All of these terms — collaborate, integrate, cooperate, and integrated services — are interrelated both in definition and in practice, but they should not be used interchangeably. Yet, commonly accepted vocabulary to describe cooperative efforts among educational, medical, and social services communities has not emerged. As a result, most authors provide operational definitions, requiring the reader to discriminate among the definitions across various authors in the literature. Frequently, the same terms are used to convey very different activities. Cooperation, collaboration, integrated services, school-linked services, and wraparound services are often used to describe various models of various groups of people working together. In addition to being used quite differently by different authors, these terms are neither independent nor mutually exclusive within any one system of definition. For example, school-linked services can describe an after-school child care bus that picks students up at school, a drug intervention program at a school, or a model of collaboration among and integration of many different social services (including various medical clinics) and the school. It would be more practical if the terms themselves indicated whether services are provided in the schools, whether collaboration between the services providers exists, and to what extent policies were changed to permit the collaboration.

Briar-Lawson and Lawson (1997) provided working definitions for some of the terms that refer to the communication between the educational and other professional communities. They described interprofessional collaboration as efforts to get specialized helping professionals to work together. This term focuses on the cooperation between two or more professionals representing two or more disciplines. According to Briar-Lawson and Lawson, service integration refers to the efforts of either administrators or educational and medical professionals to coordinate and blend the intervention strategies offered to students and families. School-linked comprehensive services are services that both collocate and link educators with other service providers. School-linked services is a broad term for a model incorporating interprofessional collaboration as well as integrated services. In order for school-linked comprehensive services to exist, some form of system change must take place. Systems change, itself a term appearing frequently in the literature, involves revisions in job descriptions, leadership structures, accountability, resource allocation, policies, and work cultures. Briar Lawson and Lawson's definitions are used as a framework in the following discussion of interprofessional relations.

POLICY AND COLLABORATION

Various levels of policy govern or influence collaboration. Certainly the law itself, in the form of both legislation and case law, has something to say about collaboration. In addition, the bylaws and policies of professional organizations also include implications for collaboration. This section briefly touches on the high points of these two areas.

Congress passed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975. This law was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 1990 (PL 101-476), and it has since been revised again (to PL 105-17 in 1997). A primary purpose of this law is to ensure that children with disabilities have available to them a free and appropriate public education that emphasizes "meaningful access to the general curriculum" (U.S. Department of Education, 2000). Special educationis a set of services provided to meet the unique needs of a student with disabilities. Related services are those services required to allow a student to benefit from his or her special education program. Medical services for diagnostic or evaluation purposes are specifically included as related services.

An individualized education program (IEP)is the mechanism through which the law specifies that appropriate special education for a child will be initiated and monitored. The IEP promotes and even requires collaboration among various groups, including the education and medical communities. Mandated as a part of the IEP is assessment by a multidisciplinary team (MDT). This team assesses the child using nondiscriminatory evaluation procedures. The assessment results, along with an appropriate program derived from those results, are included in an IEP (Turnbull, 1986). Monitoring the IEP is an ongoing process, and, therefore, ongoing communication must occur among the various members of the MDT. It is specifically stated within the regulations for creating an IEP that any individual can be invited to the meetings at the discretion of the public agency or the parent. Turnbull further explained that because physicians are the professionals who classify children as having disabilities, they also have become one of the groups of professionals charged with "deciding what to do about disabilities" (1986, p. 101). One can see that cooperation among various disciplines, at least potentially including medicine, is required to implement IDEA.

The court case of Irving Independent School District v. Tatroaffirms that it is the school's responsibility to provide diagnostic or evaluatory medical services allowing access to meaningful education for a child with a disability (see Turnbull, 1986). This case, argued beforehindu the Supreme Court, assumes and promotes the collaboration and joint efforts of school teachers and physicians in the education of children. Various professional organizations also recognize the need for collaborative relationships on behalf of students between professionals. The Chapter II bylaws of The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recognize the need for collaboration to get quality information in order to best meet the needs of all children. Article IV cites the goals and purposes of the AAP. Two objectives included in that article allude to the relationship between schools and pediatricians: to "conduct and encourage programs designed to maintain and increase the effectiveness of all those who provide health care to infants, children, adolescents, and young adults" (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1999/2000, p. 900) and to "establish and promote liaison and cooperation with other organizations concerned with the well being of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults" (American Academy of Pediatrics, 1999/2000, p. 900).

Thus, federal legislation and case law establish collaboration for the educational community. The bylaws of influential groups in the medical community who focus on children also call for collaboration. Although neither community actually requires medical–educational collaboration, both affirm its desirability and give explicit permission for such collaboration.

Excerpted from Chapter 1 of The Educator's Guide to Medical Issues in the Classroom, by Frank M. Kline, Ph.D., Larry B. Silver, M.D., & Steven C. Russell, Ph.D.

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