Progress in Behavioral Health Interventions for Children and Adolescents

Xiaoming Li, PhD, Editor

Sayward Harrison, PhD, Editor

Prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, one in five children and adolescents in the United States experienced a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral health disorder each year,¹ with far too many unable to access evidence-based care. The pandemic has exacerbated these challenges in the United States and worldwide and has exposed stark disparities in access to and quality of behavioral health services for children and families. The urgency of the mental and behavioral health crisis among youth was highlighted in an advisory issued by the US Surgeon General in 2021 calling for a swift and coordinated response to support the mental and behavioral health needs of youth and families.²

Yet despite the extensive challenges created by the global pandemic, today there is a stronger body of evidence and more resources than ever before to meet these behavioral health needs. In addition, technological innovation and rapid proliferation of mobile health tools have expanded our ability to scale up behavioral health care in order to deliver timely and tailored services to those experiencing mental and behavioral health disorders. Similarly, the field of prevention science has proliferated in recent years—offering the opportunity to prevent many mental and behavioral health challenges before they ever develop. Despite these advances, pediatric providers often feel ill-equipped and underresourced to integrate the prevention and treatment of mental and behavioral health disorders into their practice—whether due to lack of knowledge, limited comfort, time constraints, competing demands, or other systems-level barriers.

This focused issue of Pediatric Clinics of North America has been curated to address this gap by synthesizing recent advances in pediatric behavioral health care across a variety of conditions frequently encountered in pediatric practice. Because pediatric providers are often the first stop for concerned caregivers, staying abreast of developments in the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of common mental and behavioral health disorders is critical.

In this issue, we present 12 articles that provide insight for addressing a range of behavioral health concerns in the general pediatric population as well as for specific patient groups. While the behavioral foci of included articles are wide ranging (ie, childhood obesity, self-management for youth with chronic health conditions, nonmedical use of prescription drugs among adolescents), all articles highlight the wealth of knowledge that exists to inform practical approaches to promote positive behavioral health and mental health among youth. We have taken care to emphasize the advantages of integrating behavioral health services into pediatric primary care settings. We also highlight the unique benefits of school-based behavioral and mental health care and the critical importance of engaging families across the prevention and treatment continuums.

While there is much work to be done to overcome the negative impacts of COVID-19 on the well-being of children and adolescents, this issue spurs hope that advances in our scientific understanding of effective behavioral health care will translate to greater health equity, particularly for youth from vulnerable and marginalized populations. On that note, we dedicate this issue to the late Bonita F. Stanton, MD (1951-2022), who served as founding dean of the Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine and Consulting Editor of Pediatric Clinics of North America for many years. Dr Stanton’s remarkable career as a pediatrician, scientist, and visionary in medical education has left an indelible mark not only on the fields of medicine and public health but also on the countless lives that she touched along the way.