The University of Oregon has received an $11 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health.
The grant will fund a new national children’s mental health center, which will be housed in the university’s Prevention Science Institute, and will bring together faculty and students from the College of Education and the Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health in Portland.
The research center will include a new undergraduate program in Children’s Behavioral Health, a large signature project and three exploratory studies.
The project will “focus on school-based intervention to help include children in classroom instruction, as well as a family intervention for students that need a little bit of additional support,” said Beth Stormshak, a professor in the counseling, psychology and human services department in the College of Education. Her work focuses on child and family mental health prevention.
With an emphasis on middle-school aged youth, the center will collaborate with local schools and community organizations to implement the interventions discussed in the project and studies.
Stormshak said the choice to look specifically at middle school youth is far from random.
“It's a time when we see an increase in mental health concerns for kids, and it's also a time when we don't have as many supports in place for kids and families,” she said.
The work done through the new center and its projects could combat mental health issues that manifest during this time and grow as kids get older.
“If you have concerns about something early on, and you're able to put programming in place that prevents that from escalating or becoming a bigger problem, that can make a real difference for a child and a family in their life,” Stormshak said. “That's what we're focused on: trying to prevent some of these problems from getting bigger as kids transition to high school and even into the young adult years.”
The center also hopes to incorporate the theoretical research from each project in classrooms around the state.
“Our ultimate goal is to create structures and programs and implementation processes that allow for schools to prevent and serve many more kids who are at risk of a mental health concern or a behavior problem,” Stormshak said.
