Context Matters: Schools and the “Research to Practice Gap” in Children's Mental Health

Reviews have identified mental health interventions that are relevant to schools; unfortunately, this research pays insufficient attention to the school context. Several aspects of school context likely influence the ability of schools to change current practices or adopt new ones. Relying on an organizational framework, a three-level model of school context particularly relevant to the delivery of mental health interventions: (a) individual, (b) organizational, and (c) state or national-level factors are described. This article argues that effective school-based mental health care will result from the marriage of system reform efforts, capacity building, and the delivery of empirically driven intervention strategies.