Expanded School Mental Health: A Collaborative Community-School Example

School-based mental health programs are becoming increasingly prominent. This article presents an expanded school mental health framework involving school and community staff working together to enhance mental health programs in schools for youths in both general and special education. Success in this new framework requires staff from multiple disciplines to partner in planning and coordinating activities in ways that are consonant with the goals of the school and its many stakeholders. Challenges to such interdisciplinary collaboration, as well as strategies to overcome them, are presented with a real-world example.