David N. Miller

Identifying Students With Specific Learning Disabilities: School Psychologists’ Acceptability of the Discrepancy Model Versus Response to Intervention

A national sample of 496 practicing school psychologists and members of the National Association of School Psychologists were surveyed to assess levels of acceptability for the IQ-achievement (IQ-A) discrepancy model and the Response to Intervention (RTI) model as part of the identification process for students with specific learning disabilities. Significantly higher levels of acceptability were found for the RTI model. As levels of exposure to the RTI model increased, acceptability ratings for the RTI model increased and ratings for the IQ-A discrepancy model decreased. Variations in acceptability ratings for the RTI model were also found to occur in relation to school psychologists’ school setting. Specifically, school psychologists employed at middle and high schools demonstrated lower levels of acceptability for the RTI model compared with those employed at elementary and multiple settings. Implications of the study for practice and future research, as well as limitations, are discussed.

Identifying, Assessing, and Treating Self-Injury at School

Causes (with Richard Lieberman).- Prevalence and Associated Conditions.- Case Finding, Screening, and Referral.- Diagnostic Assessment.- Psychoeducational Assessment.- Treatment.

Projective Assessment and School Psychology: Contemporary Validity Issues and Implications for Practice.

Projective techniques continue to be widely used by school psychologists despite frequent criticisms of their use. This article reviews contemporary validity issues in the use of projective techniques with children and adolescents, including incremental validity, treatment validity, and problems associated with professional judgment and experience. A discussion of these issues and their implications for school-based projective assessment is provided, along with recommendations for the appropriate use of projective techniques with children and youth within a problem-solving framework.

Lessons in Suicide Prevention from the Golden Gate Bridge: Means Restriction, Public Health, and the School Psychologist.

Youth suicide is a global public health problem and some lessons for more effectively preventing it can be found in a perhaps unlikely source: the Golden Gate Bridge. Issues discussed include means restriction and method substitution, the stigma associated with suicide and the consequences of it, myths and misconceptions regarding suicide, and taking a public health approach to suicide prevention. The implications of these issues for school-based suicide prevention and school psychologists are provided.

Causes (with Richard Lieberman)

There is no single cause of NSSI in youth that reliably determines whether a child or adolescent will ultimately engage in these behaviors. Psychiatric problems and disorders often result from complex interactions of genetic predispositions, environmental events/stressors, and individual vulnerabilities, and the causes of NSSI are no different. This chapter begins with a review of several explanatory models for NSSI in youth, with a particular emphasis on the environmental/functional model, as this approach has the most support in the professional literature. Following this discussion, a comprehensive biopsychosocial framework developed by Walsh (2006) for understanding the causal variables contributing to the development of NSSI will be described. This framework leads directly to many of the recommended assessment and treatment techniques described in subsequent chapters.

School-Based Suicide Prevention, Intervention, and Postvention

Youth suicide is a worldwide public health problem that requires urgent attention. For example, in the United States, although suicide is the tenth leading cause of death among Americans overall, it is the second leading cause of death among young people ages 15–24 and the third leading cause of death among those ages 10–14. Because children and adolescents spend so much time in them, schools are ideal focal points for focused suicide prevention efforts.

Treating the Illness: The School Practitioner's Response to Health-Related Student Death and Children's Grief

ABSTRACT Although childhood death from health-related disorders has decreased dramatically in the United States due largely to advances in medical technology, it is an unfortunate fact of life that children can and do die from medical and health-related problems. A possible role for school psychologists in dealing with this situation is providing direct therapeutic services for children grieving the loss of a school friend or classmate due to a health-related disorder. The purpose of this article is to provide school psychologists with information regarding school-based interventions for childrens grief following a health-related student death. A developmental framework for conducting grief work with children is presented, along with cultural considerations and recommendations for providing therapeutic supports for children affected by a childs death.

Case Finding, Screening, and Referral

As indicated in Chaps. 1 and 3, the rates of bipolar diagnoses in children and adolescents are dramatically increasing. However, many individuals report a delay of an appropriate diagnosis, with an average of 7–9 years between the onset of symptoms and a bipolar diagnosis (Faedda, Baldessarini, Glovinsky, & Austin, 2004; Hirschfeld, Lewis, & Vornik, 2003). Unfortunately, bipolar disorder is not often considered initially (i.e., around 10 % of the time), despite recurrent affective symptoms (including mania) and a positive family history of affective and/or substance use disorders (Faedda et al., 2004).