Written By: Paolo Delvecchio, Director, Center for Mental Health Services

A recent column in the New York Times by David Brooks (“The Psych Approach,” Sept. 27, 2012) provides key insight on how children who experience serious difficulties in youth, such as experiencing trauma, often end up as adults challenged with major obstacles to success such as failure in school, substance abuse, mental illnesses, health risk behavior, chronic disease, and each of these ultimately contribute to early mortality.  Brooks cites the seminal CDC-funded Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study by Vince Felitti and Robert Anda (http://acestudy.org/) on the relationship between early adverse experiences and later behavioral and health problems. Brooks also cites the important role that social determinants play in impacting future health, behavioral health, and other socio-economic outcomes.  Such social determinants include poverty, poor housing, and a lack of social supports.   For example, how constant exposure to stressful life experiences as a young child (like living in poverty) can significantly impact the growing brain in ways that impact health and behavior for a lifetime.  Research is now indicating that chronic stress in childhood may be linked to the onset of adult problems with the nervous system, immune system and possibly even the cardiovascular system.

Brooks cites the need to break down the silos of healthcare, education, crime, social mobility and labor forces that deal individually with economic, social and family breakdown.  He concludes that “maybe it’s time for people in all these different fields to get together in a room and make a concerted push against the psychological barriers to success.”

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has such an effort underway — Project LAUNCH (Linking Actions for Unmet Needs in Children’s Health).  Project LAUNCH started by bringing together leaders in a variety of fields: mental health, public health, child welfare and education, among others.  The model for the initiative is based on the understanding that the first years of life are absolutely critical in the development of a child, and if we can work together to ensure that all young children are healthy in those early years, we will have set them on a path to success.  Being healthy means things like having good nutrition and a safe home and community in which to play and learn; it also means having caring, nurturing adults who provide a sense of security and help children learn how to form relationships, to regulate behavior and emotions, and to problem-solve: all things that can be learned and contribute to academic and life success.

Project LAUNCH works in communities across the country to bring together important adults in the lives of young children such as doctors, teachers, child care professionals, parents, grandparents, and nurses to help the child develop. Through Project LAUNCH, health care providers get additional training on issues related to emotional health – like understanding the impact of trauma on young children – and how they can better identify kids who are having emotional problems, and then connect their families to support and treatment.  Through Project LAUNCH, mental health consultants work with teachers in child care centers and schools to incorporate strategies into their classrooms that help kids learn new and better ways to problem solve, work together, and express their emotions.  Project LAUNCH also provides parents with information about resources and information for helping nurture their child’s development.  

Among its accomplishments, Project LAUNCH has trained more than 11,400 community providers on ways of providing enhanced holistic services and wrap around supports to young children.  There is an urgent need for comprehensive children’s programs, and Project LAUNCH is making a positive difference in the lives of countless children, families and communities across the nation today and for tomorrow.

For more information on Project LAUNCH please go to: http://projectlaunch.promoteprevent.org/