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National Center for Mental Health Promotion and Youth Violence Prevention

Universal Level Approaches

Boy and girl waiting to go to school

The SS/HS Initiative takes a public health approach to promoting mental health. That is, programs support the mental health of ALL children through the implementation of universal, selected, and indicated prevention interventions.

Universal prevention is typically directed toward the majority of a school’s population. Universal programs focus on shared protective factors of all students to both offset the harm posed by risk factors and promote positive healthy development. Addressing problem behaviors while promoting essential life skills is important because “being problem free is not the same as being well developed.”

By promoting a common set of protective factors, universal approaches provide a prevention framework that connects the core SS/HS elements by systematically addressing the numerous underlying social and emotional variables that these core elements share and that affect learning and development.

Although many universal-level interventions are present in school districts with SS/HS Initiatives, the following approaches are common:

  • Social and emotional learning
  • Community schools
  • Response to intervention
  • Positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS)