Where Youth Development Meets Mental Health and Education: The RALLY Approach

Significant numbers of young people throughout the world suffer from mental health problems and do not perform academically at age-appropriate levels. The educational crisis receives a great deal of attention, but the related mental health crisis is mostly silent. Change is occurring with calls for strategies to address the needs of all students, to act fast to avoid chronic disorders and school dropout, and to do so with a focus not only on the academic child but the whole child. This volume focuses on the RALLY (Responsive Advocacy for Life and Learning in Youth) approach, which integrates youth development, mental health, and education for young people in middle schools and after-school programs. RALLY is designed to give students the integrated systems of support they need to thrive and succeed. The approach is built on developmental and relational principles and emphasizes a risk and resilience framework. For a decade, it has built a preventive framework and an early intervention practice that never feels to the youth as receiving services.
A new developmentalist role, the RALLY practitioner, helps to implement youth development principles in schools and connects students' often fractured and diverse worlds, including family and community. This issue is relevant for all teachers, administrators, student support staff, after-school providers, youth workers, and mental health and health professionals. The work integrates many of the most innovative strands of school-based youth development and mental health thinking. This is the 120th issue New Directions to Youth Development the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series dedicated to bringing together everyone concerned with helping young people, including scholars, practitioners, and people from different disciplines and professions. The result is a unique resource presenting thoughtful, multi-faceted approaches to helping our youth develop into responsible, stable, well-rounded citizens.