Mental/Behavioral Health Screening
With an increased focus on supporting student wellness, many schools are interested in screening students for mental and behavioral health concerns. Mental health screening is not a product, but rather a process for identifying students at risk of developing mental and behavioral health challenges (Twyford, J., Eklund, K., Chin, J. & Dowdy, E., March, 2010).
The goal of screening is to generate new and useful information so that students can be better served in interventions that prevent or mitigate mental health challenges and promote resiliency. Thoughtful selection and implementation of a screening measure is critical to meeting this goal.
Regardless of the chosen measure, all screening should be:
For more information on how to develop an effective screening process, please see the Mental Health Screening Resource Guide.
This document is intended to assist school professionals in differentiating between Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) Competency Assessment, Universal Social, Emotional, and Behavioral (SEB) screening, and more targeted SEB assessment. This document provides some basic information relating to screening and assessment, with a selection of additional resources linked at the end to support the comprehensive planning necessary to implement effective practices.
Mental Health Screening Action Planning Checklist
The Mental Health Screening Action Planning Checklist is a form is intended to help school teams in planning and implementing a mental/behavioral health screening instrument and is a companion document to the Mental Health Screening Guide. We recognize that this is not an exhaustive checklist. Please feel free to add questions/columns as your team determines necessary.
See the Behavioral Screening Tools page for a non-exhaustive list of screening measures.