Mental Health

The Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development has taken a leadership role in addressing the mental health needs of children, youth and their families at the policy, research, training/consultation and direct service levels.

Policy

Research

Training Consultation

Direct Services

At the policy level, GUCCHD has provided the vision, leadership, knowledge base, training and technical assistance to the field to build comprehensive community service delivery systems for children with mental health and/or substance abuse needs, and their families. GUCCHD is the home of the National Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health. The National Technical Assistance Center works with states, tribes, communities and family and offers a range of training and technical assistance opportunities, publications, informational resources, and links to other organizations that can be accessed from our home page.

Mental health research at the GUCCHD includes:

• studies on preventing post-partum depression and on factors that relate to maternal depression in communities of color in urban areas
• multi-site evaluation of mental health consultation to child care programs.

GUCCHD faculty provide training and consultation related to early childhood mental health in the state of Maryland and to 58 villages in central western Alaska that are working to develop early childhood mental health systems of care.

In addition, GUCCHD faculty provide direct mental health services to the Washington, DC metropolitan community through the following:

• Autism and Communication Disorders Clinic at Georgetown University Hospital
• Hoya Clinic at Georgetown University Hospital which provides individual and family therapy for children and their families from birth to adolescence
• Mental health services on the pediatric mobile van clinic of the Department of Pediatrics at Georgetown University Hospital
• Consultation to Bright Beginnings (hot link to program page) Head Start and Early Head Start in DC

Recent publications

• Building Systems of Care: A Primer for Child Welfare
• Compendium of In-Service Training Resources
• Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation: An Evaluation Tool Kit
• Child and Family Services Reviews 2001-2004: A Mental Health Analysis