New frontiers in building mental, emotional and behavioral health in children and youth: Introduction to the special section.

Abstract

The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA; 2010) has had tremendous influence on behavioral health in the United States (Alker & Chester, 2015). Shortly after its passage, the editors of this special section became interested in examining the provisions of the ACA related to care for mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders in children and youth and synthesizing their implications in the context of other contemporary trends in children's behavioral health promotion. We first developed a white paper with the goal of increasing our own understanding of these issues and their possible influence on the status quo of designing, implementing, financing, and evaluating behavioral health services for children and their families. From our discussions came the idea of developing a special section in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry featuring input from researchers who have been exploring these issues and who have tangible and relevant examples of "new frontiers" in building mental, emotional, and behavioral health for children and youth. The result is the current special section, the purpose of which is to highlight the importance of prevention in behavioral health and to explore examples of efforts that have used a broad public health approach to prevention and early intervention in mental, emotional, and substance use disorders in children and youth. Before introducing the seven articles in this special section, we describe in detail our foundational thinking about building mental, emotional, and behavioral health for children and youth, as expressed in our initial white paper on this topic. (PsycINFO Database Record