Citation

Zakszeski BN, Ventresco NE, Jaffe AR. Sch. Ment. Health 2017; 9(4): 310-321.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s12310-017-9228-1

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The current review sought to describe the implementation and evaluation of trauma-focused school practices as represented in the published literature. Through a systematic literature search, we identified 39 articles describing trauma-focused practices implemented in school settings with elementary populations and coded data regarding these interventions' characteristics as well as their implementation and evaluation procedures. Reviewed interventions were most often implemented by external clinicians or researchers with select populations in response to traumatic events experienced by a community (e.g., natural disaster, political violence). Additionally, interventions were most frequently evaluated solely using rating scales assessing psychopathological symptoms and without consideration of important dimensions such as treatment integrity, fidelity, and acceptability as well as outcome generalization and maintenance. We call for coordinated practice and research agendas focused on embedding trauma-focused practices within integrated multi-tiered systems of supports; designing culturally sensitive practices and training school personnel to serve as intervention agents; and increasing the rigor and broadening the methods, informants, and foci of screening and intervention evaluation procedures in the direction of leveraging multi-method, multi-informant, strengths-based assessment.

Language: en