Using Mental Health Consultation to Decrease Disruptive Behaviors in Preschoolers: Adapting an Empirically-Supported Intervention

Impulsivity, hyperactivity, oppositionality, and aggression are behaviors that most three-and fouryear-old children display to some degree with up to 10 to 20% of preschoolers exhibiting these behaviors at significant levels at home or at preschool/day care.

This study provides an important first step in providing evidence to support the adaptation of empirically-supported interventions for use in mental health consultation when providing services to preschoolers with disruptive behavior problems. This study suggests that these interventions can be effectively exported from controlled clinical settings into community settings. These results will need to be replicated by training professionals already providing mental health consultation within the preschool setting to incorporate the use of the empirically-supported strategies into their everyday work with teachers and children. Having mental health consultation that includes empirically-supported interventions delivered within this collaborative framework available as part of the array of services will likely reduce the need for more costly treatments in the future.

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