The University of Oregon announced the creation of The Ballmer Institute for Children’s Behavioral Health on March 1. Behavioral health is a term that has recently gained popularity in the education field that refers to both mental health and promoting positive emotional health and behavior, according to acting executive director for the Ballmer Institute Randy Kamphaus. The institute will work to address a shortage of mental health professionals, who will be trained to address mental health issues that can create larger problems for individuals later in life.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a report in February detailing the state of mental health of youth and adolescents nationwide. In this report, it identified that of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 about 20% have experienced a major depressive episode in the last year, and of youth ages 3-17 only about 10% receive mental health support.

According to the CDC, “mental health among children and adolescents is associated with immediate and long-term physical health and chronic disease, health risk behaviors, social relationships, education, and employment.”

“Teachers are now increasingly required to promote behavioral and emotional well-being,” Kamphaus said. “[They] are in a transition period where they have to deliver health promotion services.” In schools this is often referred to as “social emotional learning.”

The UO already has the College of Education, which offers special education and school psychology programs. However, these programs are limited to graduate level degrees, and even these programs can only support so many students.

“We had 12 students in our second year cohort… It was very challenging to find 12 practicum supervisors,” Billie Jo Rodriguez, a UO professor specializing in Special Education and school psychology, said. “We can’t address the shortage if we can only have the capacity to train 10 or so school psychologists a year.” The proximity of the new Ballmer Institute to Portland Public Schools and a number of surrounding districts will provide students the opportunity to participate and conduct research in a larger and more diverse community.

According to Rodriguez, this will also improve the amount of students that UO can support. Not only will graduate programs increase in size, but the Ballmer institute will be able to educate a huge number of bachelor degree students.

By educating more students at both the graduate and bachelor levels, the institute hopes to address the lack of mental health professionals in public schools starting with the Portland area.

The other goal of the Ballmer Institute is research. “The vision is to create a more integrated approach to research,” Rodriguez said.

Interdisciplinary research is something that is already present at UO as a part of the Prevention Science Institute. According to the UO the focus of this institute is “Bio-social influences on development,” “Prevention and intervention” and “Implementation Science.” The Institute hosts faculty research that belongs to a number of different departments. Research at the Ballmer Institute should function in a similar way, Kamaphus said.

“We are a month old,” he said. “Our emphasis is on training an emotional health workforce that doesn’t exist.”