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Assessing Child Mental Health
Resources for screening and assessing children's mental health.
National Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health
The center works in partnership with families and other leaders nationwide to reform services for children and adolescents who have, or are at risk for, mental health problems and their families.
AACAP/CWLA Policy Statement on Mental Health and Substance Use Screening and Assessment of Children in Foster Care
American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (2002)
Encourages foster care programs to screen and assess children for mental health and substance abuse problems, and provides guidelines for appropriate procedures and instruments.
Best Practices for Mental Health in Child Welfare: Screening, Assessment, and Treatment Guidelines (PDF - 113 KB)
Romanelli, Landsverk, Levitt, Leslie, Hurley, Bellonci, et al. (2009)
Reviews nine principles that address pharmacotherapy practices and guidelines for treating children and youth with mental illnesses. The principles concern issues such as informed consent, documentation, treatment response, transition planning, and more.
Children's Mental Health Resource Kit: Promoting Children's Mental Health Screens and Assessments (PDF - 759 KB)
Children's Defense Fund (2003)
Designed to help practitioners promote access to and the availability of mental health screens and assessments for children.
Comprehensive Behavioral Health Assessments (CBHAs) for Children in State Care (PDF - 203 KB)
Disability Workgroup of Florida Bar Foundation Children's Legal Services Grantees (2009)
Provides basic information on CBHAs so that all stakeholders in the Florida child welfare system will know what a CBHA is, what it covers, how to obtain one, and how to use it.
Mental Health Screening and Assessment Tools for Children: Literature Review (PDF - 8100 KB)
Northern California Training Academy (2008)
Reviews measures to screen or assess mental health and/or social-emotional functioning in children of all ages, with a focus on the child welfare context whenever possible.
Young children's mental health
Developmental Screening and Assessment Instruments With an Emphasis on Social and Emotional Development for Young Children Ages Birth Through Five (PDF - 998 KB)
National Early Childhood Technical Assistance Center (2008)
Lists screening instruments that address multiple developmental domains as well as those that focus on the social-emotional developmental domain. Each instrument includes a description, the age range for which the instrument was validated, the time to administer, the scoring procedure, psychometric properties, requirements for administrators, and a list of sources.
Fragile Early Years: Assessing the Mental Health of Infants and Toddlers
Wattenberg (Ed.) (2000)
View Abstract
Contains the text of a presentation and discussion about evaluating parent-child attachment and infant mental health.
Mental Health Screening Tool (MHST 0-5): Child 0 to 5 Years (PDF - 50 KB)
California Institute for Mental Health (2000)
A brief screening tool to identify young children most urgently in need of a more thorough mental health screening or assessment.
Youth/juvenile mental health
Mental Health Screening Tool (MHST): 5 Years to Adult (PDF - 48 KB)
California Institute for Mental Health (2000)
A brief tool to rapidly screen children and youth ages 5 through adult to identify which children/youth should be referred for a mental health assessment and prioritize the urgency of the referral.
Multimodal Assessment of Dissociation in Adolescents: Inpatients and Juvenile Sex Offenders
Mayo Clinic
Sexual Abuse, 13(3), 2001
View Abstract
A study of the validity of several measures used to assess dissociation, a psychological disorder, in children.
Screening and Assessing Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders Among Youth in the Juvenile Justice System: A Resource Guide for Practitioners (PDF - 1910 KB)
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (2004)
A comprehensive synthesis of information on instruments that can be used to screen and assess youth for mental health- and substance use-related disorders, including profiles of more than 50 instruments, guidelines for selecting instruments, and practice recommendations for diverse settings and situations.