State Policy Opportunities: Advancing Comprehensive School Mental Health Systems to Support Students
Healthy Schools Campaign and Mental Health America
This policy document is designed to increase states’ understanding of the importance of working across many different agencies and partners, and the opportunities that exist to help school districts build comprehensive school mental health (CSMH) systems support.
It provides a direction for state government officials and decision makers — including governors, state legislators, chief state school officers, state secretaries of health and human services, Medicaid directors, insurance commissioners, behavioral/mental health commissioners, and others — to address student mental health needs along three system-building stages: establishing infrastructure and priorities, building structure and scale, and promoting effective implementation. An equity policy focus is built into the recommendations.
Read the report to learn more about this call for state action and how state leadership and agency collaboration are essential to the creation of quality CSMH systems for students.