Parting Reflections on Education of Children with Emotional Or Behavioral Disorders‪.‬

There are three areas that to me seem not only critical for the future of our field but to which we also need to pay more attention, as we enter a new era of evidence-based practice. These involve topics that may serve to move us beyond our traditional behavioral approaches into interdisciplinary collaboration in the larger enterprise of school mental health. They are (1) developmental psychopathology, (2) psychiatric comorbidity, and (3) psychopharmacology. What follows are brief reflections on each. As special educators, we usually care for children already referred for emotional or behavioral disorders. These disorders, however, have usually been long evident to their families through expression of mild functional impairments and/or early symptoms (Forness & Kavale, 2001a). Such disorders, in their earliest stages, however, are not always recognized as such. Developmental psychopathology holds that the trajectory of such disorders is determined by a variety of early genetic, biologic, and/ or environmental etiologies (Pennington, 2002). Parents and even professionals may have been concerned by these earlier signs yet did not necessarily view them as prodromal, as early symptoms of a possible psychiatric diagnosis. Inherent in the concept of developmental psychology is the need for early detection, instead of just early identification or diagnosis, and primary prevention, instead of just early intervention. Also inherent is the implication that, as special educators, we are "back-loading" most of our efforts, long after the diagnosis is fully realized, as opposed to "front loading" at the earliest signs of difficulty.