. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2022 Dec 1.

Published in final edited form as: Am J Psychiatry. 2022 Jun;179(6):402–416. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.21100970

Table 1.

Children and Adolescents: Summary of Included Studies

Intervention	Description	Study design and study N	Mental health and mental health-related outcomes
1. Universal school meal programs	State and federal government-funded programs that provides free meals to all students in public schools K-12. Implemented in Maine, California, and Massachusetts.	Longitudinal - interview assessments with students (N = 97) in 4^th–6^th grade and their parents, before and 6-months after the start of a universal free breakfast program in 3 Boston Public Schools (23)	Increased daily nutrient intake was associated with improvements in psychosocial functioning, as measured by the Pediatric Symptom Checklist
1. Universal school meal programs		Longitudinal (N = 133) and cross-sectional (N = 1627) study of children in public schools (22)	Reductions in hyperactivity, anxiety, and depression symptoms
2. Child Development Accounts (CDAs), also called Child Savings Accounts (CSAs)	Savings accounts – with public and/or private funding - often started at birth. The individual can begin to withdraw funds at age 18 to help pay for college, buy a home, or start a business. Ex: Maine has a universal, automatic program with participation of 100% of newborns in the state	Experimental study with adolescents (N = 267) randomly assigned an intervention or control group (32)	Improved mental health functioning as contrasted to control group
		Randomized controlled trial where children and their caregiver(s) were assigned to CDAs built on the existing Oklahoma 529 College Savings Plan (n = 1,358) or control (n = 1, 346) group, and followed up after 4 years (31)(34)	Enhanced socio-emotional development outcomes; decrease in mothers’ depression symptoms as compared to control group; greater impact among families with lower income or lower education
3. Comprehensive Behavioral Health Model of Boston Public Schools	Tiered model of mental health prevention and intervention currently in 68 Boston Public Schools (39). Tier I (Prevention, for all students) includes teacher and parent consultation, professional development, universal socio-emotional learning curriculum and universal screening. Tier II (Targeted, for some students) includes small group intervention and classroom managements. Tier III (Intensive, for a few students) includes testing, counseling, and crisis work.	Longitudinal study of 1,200 students at 14 participating elementary schools (K-5) over a 3 year period (40); Universal screening data was collected in Fall 2013, 2014, and 2015, and included the teacher-reported Behavior Intervention Monitoring Assessment (BIMAS-2)	Students with “some risk” or “high risk” on the BIMAS-2 screener experienced clinically meaningful improvements in the following BIMAS-2 scales: conduct, negative affect, cognitive attention, and social functioning; Gains in year 1 were sustained into year 2 and no negative effects were observed for students with normative social, emotional, and behavioral health.
4. Community-based interventions delivered by paraprofessionals in afterschool recreational programs	Workforce support –a model of mental health consultation, training, and support, to enhance benefits of publicly-funded recreational afterschool programs in communities of concentrated poverty.	Randomized controlled trial of 3 afterschool sites (n = 15 staff, 89 children) and 3 demographically matched comparison sites (n = 12 staff, 38 children) aiming to assess the feasibility and impact of the workforce support intervention on program quality and children’s psychosocial outcomes (42)	Modest improvements in children’s social and behavioral functioning compared to the demographically matched sites
	The Fit2Lead intervention is a park-based youth mental health promotion program involving activities for physical activity, meditation, resilience, and life skills.	Open trial design (N = 9 parks) with 198 youth participating in Fit2Lead program, who completed questionnaires before the intervention and after (end of the year); Youth were ages 9–15, in middle-school, predominantly Black and/or Latinx and living in low-income neighborhoods with high rates of community violence (45)	Youth’s and parents’ mental health remained stable over the course of a school year, indicated by no significant change in self-reported mental health before and after the intervention.