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Mental Health Conference held in Pittsburgh

New Pittsburgh Courier (PA) - 12/15/2014

To help address the growing mental health needs of America's youth, the Center for School Mental Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in collaboration with The IDEA Partnership funded by the Office of Special Education Programs, sponsored by the National Association of State Directors of Special Education, hosted a conference in Pittsburgh with the theme "School Mental Health: Enhancing Safe, Supportive and Healthy Schools."

The 19th Annual Conference on Advancing School Mental Health, held this year, brought together policymakers, health and behavioral health providers, administrators, educators, researchers, advocates, youth, families, and other schoolbased staff.

Plenary speaker Norris E. Dickard, Healthy Students Group leader of the Office of Safe and Healthy Students for the U.S. Department of Education was part of a Federal panel along with Ingrid Donato, chief of the Mental Health Promotion Branch, Division of Prevention, Traumatic Stress and Special Programs, SAMHSA, and Sean Slade, director of Healthy School Communities, ASCD who will be speaking on behalf of ASCD and the Center for Disease Control.

Dennis D. Embry, president/senior scientist, PAXIS Institute provided a keynote presentation titled, "The Power of Prevention in Schools - A Roadmap to Significantly Improve the Health of the Nation's Children. Russ Skiba addressed disproportionality in school discipline presenting on what has been learned and what should be done next. There were over 100 workshops and intensive training sessions for participants to attend. Pittsburgh was chosen as the site for this year's conference in recognition of its long history of state and local partnerships supporting mental health services in schools.