Correspondence regarding this article should be addressed to Jessica Deighton, University College London and Anna Freud Centre, 21 Maresfield Gardens, London, England, NW3 5SU; e-mail:
Miranda Wolpert is Director of the Evidence Based Practice Unit (EBPU), an academic and service development unit across University College London and child mental health charity the Anna Freud Centre, committed to developing and disseminating the evidence base in relation to child mental health service provision. She is also Director of the Child Outcomes Research Consortium, a learning collaboration committed to routine outcome evaluation and use to inform quality improvement in schools and clinics. She currently chairs the outcomes and evaluation group of the Improving Access to Psychological Therapies initiative and leads the mental health stream of the Department of Health Child Policy Research Unit.
Neil Humphrey is a professor of psychology of education and Research Director of Education at the University of Manchester. He studied psychology at the University of Liverpool from 1995–1998. He then went on to study for a postgraduate certificate in learning and teaching and a PhD in education at Liverpool John Moores University from 1998–2001. He worked for a year at the University of Bolton, from 2001–2002, before taking up a lectureship in psychology of education at the University of Manchester in 2002. He became a senior lecturer in 2007 and was promoted to professor of psychology of education in 2010. Neil has been Research Director of Education since 2013.
Jessica Deighton is Deputy Director and Research Lead for the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services EBPU. Her primary research interests concern the relationship between social, emotional, and educational outcomes for children and the effectiveness of interventions to improve children's mental health and well-being in school- and health-based settings. Her current work includes research into the use of modeling of routine outcome data and factors associated with the onset and continuation of conduct problems as part of the Department of Health Child Policy Research Unit.
Praveetha Patalay is a University College London PhD candidate based at the EBPU. Her research interests fall in the area of child development and epidemiology, with a focus on children's mental health. She is currently involved in projects investigating the measurement of mental health, developmental trajectories of symptoms, and school-based mental health support and literacy interventions.
Andrew J.B. Fugard is a social scientist and lecturer in educational psychology research methods and statistics at University College London and was formerly affiliated with the Anna Freud Centre. His current research focuses on understanding mental health intervention outcomes (e.g., modeling national outcome datasets and using mixed methods to explore reasons for variation in outcomes). He has also published research on the psychology of reasoning and is interested in how people think about evidence.
Peter Fonagy is Chief Executive Officer at the Anna Freud Centre, as well as Head of the Research Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology and the Freud Memorial Professor of Psychoanalysis at University College London. He is currently serving as a senior investigator, National Institute for Health Research; visiting clinical professor, Harvard University; and clinical professor of psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine. Peter is the holder of numerous prizes, awards, and other honors in the United Kingdom, United States, and Israel, including—recently—the following: Honorary Fellowship, The American College of Psychiatrists, elected October 2014; and Fellowship, The Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom), elected April 2014.
Jay Belsky is the Robert M. and Natalie Reid Dorn Professor of Human Development at the University of California, Davis, and an internationally recognized expert in the field of child development and family studies. From 1999–2010, Professor Belsky served as Founding Director of the Institute for the Study of Children, Families and Social Issues and a professor of psychology at Birkbeck University of London. In 2007 he was awarded the American Psychological Association Urie Bronfenbrenner Award for Lifetime Contribution to Developmental Psychology in the Service of Science and Society. In 2010 he was made a member of the Academy of Europe.
Panos Vostanis is a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at the Greenwood Institute of Child Health, University of Leicester. His research and clinical interests include the impact of trauma on child mental health, with a range of research with vulnerable groups such as children in foster care, homeless persons, adopted persons, refugees, and victims of war trauma.
Associate Editor: Richard Gilman
We report on a randomized controlled trial of Targeted Mental Health in Schools (TaMHS), which is a nationally mandated school-based mental health program in England. TaMHS aimed to improve mental health for students with, or at risk of, behavioral and emotional difficulties by providing evidence-informed interventions relating to closer working relationships between health and education services. Our study involved 8,480 children (aged 8–9 years) from 266 elementary schools. Students in intervention schools with, or at risk of, behavioral difficulties reported significant reductions in behavioral difficulties compared with control school students, but no such difference was found for students with, or at risk of, emotional difficulties. Implementation of TaMHS was associated with increased school provision of a range of interventions and enhanced collaboration between schools and local specialist mental health providers. The implications of these findings are discussed, in addition to the strengths and limitations of the study.
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