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Depression, anxiety, and stress are common mental health problems among adolescents. Cross-sectional and longitudinal studies have found that students who suffer from mental health problems (e.g., ADHD, anxiety, or depression) tend to manifest school and social problems. It is urgent to identify and intervene early to help children with mental health problems to improve their life outcomes. Unfortunately, research has shown that a significant proportion of children who suffer from behavioral or emotional problems remain unidentified because their symptoms are too mild to be noticed through casual observation by caregivers and teachers. As a result, their symptoms continue to develop gradually and eventually become mental illnesses. When mild to moderate symptoms become a noticeable mental illness, treatment becomes long-term, more invasive, and expensive. Early detection of children who are at risk of behavioral or emotional problems is possible through universal mental health screening in the school setting. The present study focused on the Behavioral and Emotional Screening System (BESS; Kamphaus & Reynolds, 2007) to identify students who were at mild risk of mental health problems and to examine their academic trajectories over four years. The findings suggest that students at mild risk of behavioral and emotional problems showed similar academic performance as other students. As a result, students with mild to moderate symptoms can be easily overlooked if academic performance were relied on as an indicator of mental health risk. The current results lend support for conducting universal behavioral and emotional risk screening at schools. A brief screener, applied universally, appears to be an effective solution for identifying students at mild risk of behavioral and emotional problems and acting early to prevent these problems from worsening.

We tested the reliability and construct validity of a Chinese translation of one of the forms of the Behavior Assessment System for Children (3rd Edition)--Self-Report of Personality for adolescent 11- to 21-year olds (BASC-3-SRP-A). The BASC-3-SRP-A yields 16 subscales that form four composite scales. Data were obtained from 444 12- to 14-year olds (Group 1; girls: 59.0%) and 759 15- to 18-year olds (Group 2; girls: 69.2%). For both groups, Cronbach's alphas for most of the 16 subscales were higher than 0.70 and were higher than 0.83 for the four composite scales. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using Mplus 8 on the combined sample yielded support for the construct validity of the Chinese translation of the BASC-3-SRP-A. Findings support the use of BASC-3-SRP-A among Chinese youth.

There is growing evidence that current classification methods are not consistent with current empirical knowledge of childhood psychopathology and the optimal way to classify school-age children remains controversial. The current study investigated three classification methods (categorical, dimensional, person-oriented) for use in predicting school-based outcomes. Children (grades 1-5; N = 558) were administered the Behavior Assessment System for Children-Teacher Rating Scale and results were used to form three classification systems. Educational outcome variables were collected seven months later and the predictive validity of the three classification systems was compared using regression analyses. Findings indicated that all three methods for predicting educational outcomes were modest and were best able to predict later grade point averages. Results indicate the relative superiority of person-oriented and dimensional methods of classification; however these classification methods warrant further investigation. (Contains 6 tables.)

Increasingly, schools are implementing school-based screening for risk of behavioral and emotional problems; hence, foundational evidence supporting the predictive validity of screening instruments is important to assess. This study examined the predictive validity of the Behavior Assessment System for Children-2 Behavioral and Emotional Screening System Student Form (BESS Student) in the authentic context of an urban high school that conducted universal screening over 3 years. Multivariate regression, sensitivity, specificity, and receiver operating characteristic curve analyses were used to examine the BESS Student scores' prediction of internalizing symptoms. BESS Student scores were able to explain a significant proportion of the variance in internalizing symptoms concurrently, but predictive validity estimates decreased over time. Significant gender differences were present; BESS Student scores were better able to predict internalizing symptoms for females. Implications for research and practice involving screening for behavioral and emotional problems are discussed.

Introduction: A 2009 National Academies of Sciences report on child mental health prevention and treatment concluded that screening for mental health risk is an essential component of service delivery. To date, however, there are few practical assessments available or practices in place that measure individual child risk, or risk aggregated at the school or community level. This study examined the utility of a 30-item paper and pencil student self-report screener of behavioral and emotional risk (BER) for surveying community risk among 7 schools. Methods: In 2010, 2,222 students in 3 middle and 4 high schools in a medium-sized school district in Georgia were administered the Behavioral and Emotional Screening System Self-Report Child/Adolescent form (BESS Student). The BESS is designed to measure 4 sub-syndromal BER factors for developing mental health disorders: inattention/hyperactivity, internalizing, school problems, and personal adjustment. Analysis of Variance and Chi Square analyses were used to assess the association between adolescent self-reported BER as an indicator of school BER, grade level, child ethnic identification and gender, socioeconomic status, and special education placement status.Results: BESS scores differentiated well between schools for overall BER and special education status, as well as between grade levels, ethnicity, and gender groups. One high school, known by the school administration to have numerous incidents of student behavior problems, had the most deviant 4 BER domain scores of all 7 schools. Girls rated themselves as having a higher prevalence of BER (14%) than boys (12%); middle school students reported fewer difficulties than high school students.Conclusion: Middle and high school students were capable of identifying significant differences in their own BER across schools, suggesting that universal mental health risk screening viastudent self-report is potentially useful for identifying aggregated community risk in a given school that may warrant differential deployment of mental health prevention and intervention strategies. BESS results reliably identified individual mental health risk associated with special education placement, which is documented to lead to poor school outcomes such as school dropout and lack of enrollment in post-secondary education. [West J Emerg Med. 2013;14(4):384–390.]