School districts mental health unit

Pia Escudero, Los Angeles Unified School District Mental Health Services Unit, Van Nuys, California 91406... 

II. School-district mh Unit—few districts operate specific mental health units that encompass clinic facilities, as well as providing services and consultation to schools. Some others have started financing their own school-based health centers with mental health services as a major element. The format for this mechanism tends to be centralized clinics with the capability for outreach to schools. 

While these statistics offer hope, others have dismissed them as overly optimistic. Realistically, a major organizational crisis can be expected in a moderatesized to large school district almost every year (Pitcher Poland, 1992) (Poland McCormick, 1999). Calming parents and the public is a job often assigned to the school mental health specialist. The task for school crisis responders, therefore, is to strike a balance between irrational fear on the one hand and reasonable preparation for probable crises on the other. One way to accomplish this balance is to review current reports about school safety and violence. The National Center for Educational Statistics (http //www.nces.ed.gov/index.html) publishes an annual report on U.S. schools crime data. An excellent review of targeted school shootings is the United States Secret Service Report written by Vossekuil et al. (2000). 

---