From Evidence to Impact: Joining Our Best School Mental Health Practices with Our Best Implementation Strategies
Open accessAbstract
There is substantial research evidence for the effectiveness of school mental health strategies across problem areas, developmental levels, and the prevention-intervention spectrum. At the same time, it is clear that the education and mental health fields continue to struggle to apply this evidence at any level of scale. This commentary reflects on ways in which education-specific applications of implementation science principles - and explicit consideration of determinants of implementation success - may guide more consistent use of evidence in school mental health. After reviewing implementation determinants and strategies across multiple levels of effect (i.e., the outer setting, inner setting, individual, and intervention levels), the commentary goes on to recommend specific areas of needed attention in school mental health implementation efforts and research. These include a need to adapt interventions to better fit the context of schools, streamlining school mental health programs and practices to make them more implementable, and recognizing the critical role of assessment and selection of evidence-based interventions by school leaders. The commentary concludes by reflecting on the substantial opportunity provided by the education sector to both apply and advance implementation science.
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Evidence-based practices are inconsistently adopted, delivered with fidelity, or sustained over time in schools.
“However, EBP are inconsistently adopted, delivered with fidelity, or sustained over time in schools [5, 6].”
From Leading the charge in the education sector: development and validation of the School Implementation Leadership Scale (SILS) (2022) · cites this paper as [5]
The section “Viewing School Mental Health Interventions through an Implementation Lens” describes inadequate implementation support in schools and a need to improve adherent uptake of research-based practices. The Conclusion also reports that many EBP implementation efforts fail. These passages support inconsistent adoption and fidelity, but they do not establish that school-based EBPs are inconsistently sustained over time; no page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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- Lyon AR, Cook CR, Locke J, Davis C, Powell BJ, & Waltz TJ (under review). Importance and feasibility of an adapted set of strategies for implementing evidence-based mental health practices in schools.
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- Authors
- Lyon, A. R., & Bruns, E. J.
- Affiliations
- University of Washington (US)
- Corresponding author
- Lyon, Aaron R.
- Venue
- School Mental Health
- Published
- 2019-01-01
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 106-114
- ISSN
- 1866-2625 (ISSN-L)
- 1866-2633
- PMC
- PMC6839825
- OpenAlex
- W2907495525
- Cited by
- 191
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 39 · 2023: 34 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 25 · 2020: 11 · 2019: 6 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 16.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- School Mental Health (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (acceptedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Funders
- National Institute of Mental Health (R34MH109605)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Health Policy Implementation Science
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Speech and Hearing › School Health and Nursing Education
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Educational Assessment and Improvement
- Keywords
- implementation science, evidence-based interventions, implementation factors, implementation strategies, school leaders, intervention adaptation, school-based mental health programs, prevention and intervention
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