Mental Health Strategies for Pediatric Care

This new guide will help clinicians recognize and manage emerging mental health issues using interventions that are designed for the primary care setting.

Mental Health Strategies for Pediatric Care provides a framework for identifying and understanding the common factors and common elements of mental health care and, as a natural outgrowth, incorporating the following considerations into daily practice:

• - Eliciting patient and family social and mental health concerns
• - Increasing patient and family understanding of social and mental health problems
• - Managing mental health issues that have resulted in functional problems but not reached the level of a diagnosable disorder
• - Using therapeutic strategies that are an early, first-line approach to common mental health concerns
• - Developing positive patient and family attitudes about seeking treatment from social service or mental health specialists
• - Supporting the patient and family in maintaining emotional and behavioral change that results from mental health specialty treatment
• - And more!

Susan G. Forman, PhD, is a professor at Rutgers University. She has served as Chair of the Department of Applied Psychology, and Director of Clinical Training for the School Psychology Program in the Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, and as Vice President for Undergraduate Education. Prior to coming to Rutgers, she was Professor of Psychology and also served as Associate Provost at the University of South Carolina. Her research and scholarship focus on implementation of interprofessional collaborative approaches to pediatric behavioral healthcare, factors that influence intervention implementation, and the effectiveness of behavioral and cognitive-behavioral interventions in educational settings. Her publications include over 100 journal articles, book chapters, and books. Her work has been supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the U.S. Department of Education, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Science Foundation, and the American Psychological Association, as well as a number of corporate and family foundations. Dr Forman has served on the executive boards of the School Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association and the National Association of School Psychologists and has served as Chair of the Council of Directors of School Psychology Programs. She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and has been elected to membership in the Society for the Study of School Psychology based on her scientific contributions to the field.

Jeffrey D. Shahidullah, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry within Dell Medical School at The University of Texas at Austin. He is a pediatric psychologist within the Department of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Dell Children’s Medical Center and UT Health Austin. Dr Shahidullah also provides consultative telephonic support for mental/behavioral health concerns to rural primary care practices and schools as part of state-funded telemedicine initiatives, Texas Child Psychiatry Access Network (CPAN) and Texas Child Health Access Through Telemedicine (TCHATT) program. He is the Director of Training for the Texas Childhood Trauma Research Network (CTRN) and is also a faculty affiliate in the UT Center for Health IPE where he leads interprofessional education and training efforts across the university. He is the Director of Research for the Department of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics at Dell Children’s where he runs the IMPACT Lab, which is a family-centered research hub, joining clinical and academic programs to develop and disseminate equitable models to improve early detection and access to care for children with autism spectrum disorder and other neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Cody Hostutler, PhD, is a pediatric primary care psychologist at Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University. As a trainer, researcher, and clinician in pediatric primary care, he has considerable experience in implementing common factors and elements approaches in his practice, as well as training primary care clinicians, medical residents, and psychology trainees in this approach to mental health treatment in primary care.

Cori Green, MD, MS, FAAP is Director of Behavioral Health Education and Integration in pediatrics and an Associate Professor of Clinical Pediatrics at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine. Her clinical and research focus is the integration of pediatric mental health care into pediatric care and she has received grant funding and published in this field. She is a faculty member for Project TEACH and the REACH Institute where she trains pediatric providers to integrate mental health into primary care. Dr Green is part of several of the American Academy of Pediatrics mental health initiatives as a member of Mental Health Leadership Workgroup. She also consults for the American Board of Pediatrics.

Rebecca Baum, MD, FAAP is a developmental behavioral pediatrician at The Olson Huff Center at Mission Children’s Hospital in Asheville, NC. She has led several clinical, educational, research, and quality improvement efforts at the state and national levels focused on improving care for children with behavioral health conditions. She is a consultant to the American Board of Pediatrics Foundation’s Behavioral/Mental Health Crisis efforts and chair of the American Board of Pediatrics’ subboard of Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics. She is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Psychosocial Aspects of Child and Family Health and liaison to the Section on Developmental Behavioral Pediatrics.