Strategies & Tools

Here we present strategies, skills, and tools to help you prevent, identify, assess and manage common mental health concerns in practice. 

Why Mental Health in Pediatrics?

Mental health education and training has not been a traditional component of pediatric residency programs. Many pediatric clinicians identify barriers to expanding their scope of practice to include mental health care, including time, training, motivation, and lack of consultation and referral sources.  

At the same time, the American Academy of Pediatrics has been calling for expansion of mental health competencies in pediatric training for over 10 years. Key references and policy statements are included here.

References

Foy, J. M., Green, C. M., & Earls, M. F. (2019). Mental Health Competencies for Pediatric Practice. In Pediatrics (Vol. 144, Issue 5). https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2019-2757

Giles, L. L., & Martini, D. R. (2017). Essential Elements of a Collaborative Mental Health Training Program for Primary Care. In Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am (Vol. 26, Issue 4, pp. 839–850). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2017.06.012

Green, C. M., Foy, J. M., & Earls, M. F. (2019). Achieving the Pediatric Mental Health Competencies. In Pediatrics (Vol. 144, Issue 5). https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2019-2758

Hampton, E., Richardson, J. E., Bostwick, S., Ward, M. J., & Green, C. (2015). The current and ideal state of mental health training: Pediatric resident perspectives. In Teach Learn Med (Vol. 27, Issue 2, pp. 147–154). https://doi.org/10.1080/10401334.2015.1011653

Harris, E., Bowden, J., Greiner, E., & Duby, J. C. (2019). Mental Health Training in Pediatric Residency: Where Can We Go? In J Pediatr (Vol. 211, pp. 4–6). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpeds.2019.05.075

McMillan, J. A., Land, Jr., M., & Leslie, L. K. (2017). Pediatric Residency Education and the Behavioral and Mental Health Crisis: A Call to Action. In Pediatrics (Vol. 139, Issue 1). https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2016-2141