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Adopting a Data-Driven Public Health Framework in Schools: Results from a Multi-Disciplinary Survey on School-Based Mental Health Practice

School-based mental health (SBMH) is a growing and important subspecialty within the variety of mental health professions. In Illinois, the state has its own state-driven certification process for four major school-based mental health professions: school counselors, school nurses, school psychologists, and school social workers. To continue building the infrastructure of SBMH and inform practice in this field requires a commitment to understanding the current work and context of these practitioners. The past decade has seen significant changes in education policy and thinking about service provision, as highlighted by Response to Intervention (RTI) and Positive Behavior Supports (PBS), both of which emphasize systematic collection of data on students and interventions designed to improve student outcomes by embedding this work in a three-tier prevention framework drawn from public health approaches. To date, no data about the field has been collected on all of these professions at one time in Illinois. Findings from the survey data (N = 1874, overall response rate of 31%) indicate that SBMH in Illinois is located largely in tertiary activities involving individual and small-group counseling, and few school-based mental health professionals (SBMHP) show a consistent pattern of practice within the current PBS/RTI framework or use more than limited data to inform practice choices.