Journal of Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

In this article, the authors examined (a) the accuracy of teacher nominations in identifying (N = 178) high school students with externalizing, internalizing, comorbid, and typical behavior patterns, as well as students who were receiving special education services for high-incidence disabilities, (b) the level of treatment fidelity and access to reinforcement for the different student groups, and (c) the degree to which these different types of students responded to a schoolwide positive behavior support (SW-PBS) intervention program. Results indicated that despite receiving equal access to reinforcement, there were subtle differences regarding how different types of high school students responded to the SW-PBS. It appears that students with internalizing behavior problems were the most responsive, whereas students with comorbid concerns were the least responsive. Limitations and directions for future research are offered.

For the study reported here, the authors used growth mixture modeling to analyze changes in alcohol and marijuana use and the use of drug and alcohol treatment services for a sample of 180 adolescents with serious emotional disturbance (ages 12—14 years at the beginning of the 7-year longitudinal study).Three latent classes of substance users were identified, two of which exhibited significant linear increases in substance use. As expected, adolescents who were heavily involved in substance use at the beginning of the study and who significantly increased their substance use were the most likely to receive the greatest number of alcohol and drug services. Adolescents who had low levels of substance use at the beginning of the study but whose substance use increased significantly during the study received fewer services. The fact that the initially low substance-use class eventually ended up resembling the high substance-use class at the end of the 7-year study underscores the importance of collecting longitudinal data on substance use and employing the rate of change in substance use as an indicator of the need for treatment. Advantages of growth mixture and parallel processing modeling for studying changes in substance use and services are discussed.

Suspension and expulsion are widely used to exclude students with and without disabilities who present problem behaviors in school, despite contentious legal debate and evidence associating these methods with high ecological stress and problematic developmental outcomes. Using selected participant data (N = 1,824) from the SEELS study, the study authors entered multilevel predictors into logistic regression analyses to identify factors associated with higher likelihood of exclusion (HLE) among students in three high-exclusion disabilitygroups:emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD), other health impairment (OHI) with a diagnosis of attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and learning disability (LD). When the authors examined disability groups together, HLE was more likely among students with EBD and ADHD compared to students with LD. HLE was also associated with African American ethnicity, older age, male gender, low socio-economic status, multiple school changes, urban schooling, and having parents who expressed low school satisfaction. However, when the authors examined the disability groups individually, predictor profiles varied markedly by disability type.The authors discuss implications for school programs.

Children identified as having emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD) may have different out-of-home care placements than their peers without EBD.This study compared the factors influencing placement movements for 362 children with EBD and 363 children without EBD, using clinical Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) scores at baseline data collection of the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being. The analyses explored potential case characteristics influencing the number of placements for children with a clinical CBCL score at baseline data collection. Poisson regression models were used to explain the number of placements experienced during the first 36 months of placement. Overall, children with a clinical-level CBCL score were 2.5 times as likely to experience four or more placements as their nonclinical peers. Findings indicated that the presence of depression and not residing with siblings predicted movement among children with EBD. Among children without EBD, only older age was strongly associated with placement moves. Although the direction of effects is equivocal, these results call for greater attention to children's experience of out-of-home placement and the lack of homogeneity among children who are placed outside their homes.

Adolescents with conduct disorder frequently engage in aggressive and disruptive behaviors. Often these behaviors are controlled or managed through behavioral or other psychosocial interventions. However, such interventions do not always ensure lasting changes in an adolescent's response repertoire so that he or she does not engage in aggression when exposed to the same situations that gave rise to the behavior previously. Mindfulness training provides a treatment option that helps an individual focus and attend to conditions that give rise to maladaptive behavior.Using a multiple baseline design,we assessed the effectiveness of a mindfulness training procedure in modulating the aggressive behavior of three adolescents who were at risk of expulsion from school because of this behavior. The adolescents were able to learn the mindfulness procedure successfully and use it in situations that previously occasioned aggressive behavior.This led to large decreases in the aggression of all three individuals. Follow-up data showed that the adolescents were able to keep their aggressive behavior at socially acceptable levels in school through to graduation. Maladaptive behaviors, other than aggression, that the adolescents chose not to modify, showed no consistent change during mindfulness training, practice, and follow-up.