Tag Archive for: Mental Health

When COVID robbed children of their friendships, learning suffered

By Caitlin McDermott-Murphy, Reprinted from The Harvard Gazette After the pandemic closed schools last year, hospitals saw a surge in mental health-related emergency visits among children 18 and under. The statistics have been grim enough that a large cohort of the nation’s top pediatricians recently declared a “national emergency” in child and adolescent mental health. […]

Creating a culture of belonging: How teachers and mentors can help students navigate the return to in-person learning

by Jean E Rhodes School closures and the loss of face-to face instruction remain persistent struggles as schools work to contain COVID-19. In recent months, researchers have begun to publish studies and reports that have explored the academic and social toll that these closures have taken on students academic and social-emotional well-being. In a new […]

“There’s an App for that!”: How technology-delivered interventions could revolutionize mentoring

by Jean Rhodes In an influential chapter, mentoring researchers Timothy Cavell and Chris Elledge (2014) argued that the field of youth mentoring needs to move from the common “relationship as intervention” model (i.e., the friendship model where the primary goal is form a close bond) to a “relationship as a context for intervention” model. In this latter […]

Paraprofessional Youth Mentoring: New framework proposes the integration of youth mentoring and mental health services

McQuillin, S. D., Hagler, M. A., Werntz, A., & Rhodes, J. E. (2021). Paraprofessional Youth Mentoring: A Framework for Integrating Youth Mentoring with Helping Institutions and Professions. American Journal of Community Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12546 Summarized by Ariel Ervin Notes of Interest:  Although a lot of progress has been made to lower the levels of youth mental health and behavioral […]

Mentors are well positioned to

by Jean Rhodes This week, Dr. Alexandra Werntz, Sam McQuillin, Tom Keller and several other colleagues are presenting data at the 2024 Summer Institute on youth Mentoring   hat show that the demand mental health services, including those provided by psychologists, counselors, and social workers,  vastly exceeds the supply. Indeed, less than a third of […]

Getting to Carnegie Hall: Why practicing skills is a “best practice” in mentoring

by Jean Rhodes Chances are you’ve heard about the pedestrian on 57th Street who sees a musician getting out of a cab and asks, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” Without pause, the musician replies “Practice.” Indeed, when it comes to any skill, from music and sports to academics and social-emotional learning, practice makes […]

Effective Tutoring: Out-of-school Time Providers Need To Know What Works

Research shows that high-intensity tutoring is the most effective method to help students who have fallen behind. Here, a trained Saga Education tutor works daily in a group of no more than two students and coordinates closely with classroom teachers. By Stell Simonton, Reprinted from Youth Today In the coming months, after-school and summer learning […]

Are supportive relationships enough? The great debate continues

by Jean Rhodes In their provocative new paper, Back to the Future: Mentoring as Means and End in Promoting Child Mental Health, mentoring experts Tim Cavell, Renée Spencer & Sam D. McQuillin make the case for several approaches, including the “supportive mentoring” approach, wherein the “mentoring relationship is not intended as a targeted intervention designed to produce […]

Making the case for paraprofessional mentoring …40 years ago

by Jean Rhodes In 1979, a young psychology professor named Joseph Durlak published a controversial study in Psychological Bulletin that sent ripples through the helping professions. What Joe sought to do was to combine all published studies that had compared the outcomes of experienced psychologists, psychiatrists, and social workers with those of paraprofessionals (i.e., nonexpert, […]

Giving psychology away: The promise of paraprofessional mentors

by Jean Rhodes More than fifty years ago, community psychologist George Albee (and my mentor) pointed to the wide and unbridgeable gaps between the small number of highly trained mental health professionals and the vast number of people who need care and support. He called for new models in which psychologists and other helping professionals […]