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Youth exposed to traumatic events are at higher risk for negative developmental outcomes, including low academic performance, poor social skills, and mental health concerns. To best address these risks, school-based intervention services, and trauma-informed practices can be provided. The goal of this study was to systematically review the intervention research conducted on school-based trauma interventions, with specific attention to examine intervention effectiveness, feasibility, and acceptability across studies. It was found that feasibility and acceptability are not frequently examined, though the data available showed that Enhancing Resiliency Amongst Students Experiencing-Stress (ERASE-Stress) and school-based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) had high rates of fidelity; and school-based CBT had high levels of acceptability. The review also examined demographic variables and found that U. S.-based research reported racially/ethnically diverse samples, and most samples were from low-income populations. Most studies examined youth exposed to warand terror-related traumas or natural disaster-related traumas.Additionally, this review provides future directions for research and reveals the need for further research on intervention feasibility and acceptability. A brief description of practice recommendations based on prior research has also been included. It also exposes the need for studies that examine various student demographic variables that are currently not examined and consistency in rating scale use in school-based trauma intervention research.

Collaborative community-based mental health services improve youth outcomes and physicians and school personnel should strive to be part of these teams. Further research is needed to more closely examine the challenges of helping youth to meet the goals associated with their wraparound services. Relatively higher service attrition rates in low-income African American youth warrants further investigation. (PsycINFO Database Record

Due to the negative impact of trauma exposure, effective treatments are necessary to prevent and improve negative trauma-related outcomes. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is considered an efficacious treatment for children and adolescents exposed to traumatic events. Despite the various meta-analyses that have examined trauma treatments, there is a paucity of research on the moderating variables that may impact treatment outcomes. This meta-analytic CBT study addressed those limitations by examining the moderating effects of treatment components on outcomes. A search identified 94 CBT studies with 97 relevant effect sizes for children and adolescents exposed to traumatic events. Consistent with prior meta-analytic studies, CBT was shown to be effective for traumaexposed youth. CBT subtreatments did not produce significantly different results from one another. Moderators shown to significantly impact CBT treatment outcomes for posttraumatic stress symptom were trauma type, Q = 24.09, p = .004, ds = −0.22 to −1.42, and gender, Q = 10.68, p = .005, ds = −0.53 to −1.36, whereas moderators shown to impact treatment outcomes for depression were study design, Q = 10.95, p = .004, ds = −0.26 to −0.50, and treatment setting, Q = 10.98, p = .004, ds = −0.31 to −0.56. The implications of these findings for research and practice are discussed.

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