Issues In Children's Mental Health

Dr. Greene's guest on today's program is Tuija Lehtinen, a school psychologist in Haninge, Sweden, who is currently overseeing a project in which the Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) model is being implemented in all 16 public schools, with children aged 6-16. Tuija filled is in on how her school system has organized the effort, along with some of the bumps in the road so far.

Dr. Greene's guest on today's program was Dr. Christopher Kaufman, a licensed psychologist and certified school psychologist whose 27 years of practice includes over two decades as Lead Psychologist for the Portland (Maine) Public School Department. Dr. Kaufman is also author of Executive Function in the Classroom: Practical Strategies for Improving Performance and Enhancing Skills for All Students. Want to hear about the link between lagging skills and challenging behavior...and about the need for school systems and eveyone else) to focus more on lagging skills than on the behaviors caused by those lagging skills?  Listen!

Dr. Greene's guest on today's program was Sally Payson-Hayes, Ph.D., a school psychologist in the Oakland (California) Unified School District, where there's a lot of Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) going on...and a lot of research on the model going on as well. She talked about the rationale behind implementing CPS, the difficulties in implementation, and the research findings thus far.

Who's likely to commit violent acts and why do they do it? Can we predict violence well enough to prevent it? This was a fascinating discussion with Dr. James Garbarino, author of Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them.

On today's program, Dr. Greene was joined by Dr. Amanda Nickerson -- presently inaugural director of the University of Buffalo’s Alberti Center for Bullying Abuse Prevention -- to discuss bullying prevention in particular and the social-emotional well-being of kids in general. Dr. Nickerson had a very thoughtful take on things, and even gave us the top three skills kids need to do well: problem-solving, empathy, and emotion regulation. No wonder we had her on the program!