ARTICLES
A School-Based Mental Health Program for Traumatized Latino Immigrant Children

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ABSTRACT

Objective

To pilot-test a school mental health program for Latino immigrant students who have been exposed to community violence.

Method

In this quasi-experimental study conducted from January through June 2000, 198 students in third through eighth grade with trauma-related depression and/or posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms were compared after receiving an intervention or being on a waitlist. The intervention consisted of a manual-based, eight-session, group cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) delivered in Spanish by bilingual, bicultural school social workers. Parents and teachers were eligible to receive psychoeducation and support services.

Results

Students in the intervention group (n = 152) had significantly greater improvement in posttraumatic stress disorder and depressive symptoms compared with those on the waitlist (n = 47) at 3-month follow-up, adjusting for relevant covariates.

Conclusions

A collaborative research team of school clinicians, educators, and researchers developed this trauma-focused CBT program for Latino immigrant students and their families. This pilot test demonstrated that this program for traumatized youths, designed for delivery on school campuses by school clinicians, can be implemented and evaluated in the school setting and is associated with a modest decline in trauma-related mental health problems.

Section snippets

Mental Health for Immigrants Program

The MHIP was developed in the context of an ecological framework (Belsky, 1980;Cicchetti and Lynch, 1993;Trickett and Birman, 1989), specific to both cultural and school ecologies. As part of the wide variety of supportive services offered to newly immigrant children in LAUSD through the EIEP (orientation classes, medical and dental screening, language classes, and tutoring), the MHIP addressed some of the mental health needs of the traumatized immigrant students.

The MHIP child intervention was

Sample Characteristics

Table 2 describes the sample characteristics for students by treatment assignment. Participants had a mean age of 11 years, with two thirds of the students in middle school (n = 156, 68%). Half of the students were female (n = 114, 50%), and more than half were born in Mexico (n = 131, 57%). The mean parental education level was less than 5 years, and the majority of parents were married (162, 71%). There were no significant differences in demographic characteristics between those who received

DISCUSSION

These results provide evidence that this school-based, trauma-focused, CBT intervention for Latino immigrant students is associated with modest reduction in symptoms of PTSD and depression. Further investigation is needed to determine whether symptoms continue to diminish to nonclinical ranges over time. Nonetheless, these results are encouraging and suggest that CBT can be effectively delivered by school clinicians to treat children exposed to a wide range of community violence. The

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    This work was supported by the Los Angeles Unified School District, the Emergency Immigrant Education Program, the UCLA Center for Health Services Research, the NIMH Faculty Scholars Program, the Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program, and NIMH grant MH54623. The authors thank Ken Wells, Naihua Duan, and Jeanne Miranda for their consultation.

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