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Promoting Mental Health in Early Childhood Programs: Serving Low-Income Ethnic Minority Families

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Handbook of School Mental Health

Abstract

Nearly 25% of young children in the United States are living in poverty, and a disproportionate number of those children are African American or Latino (Children’s Defense Fund, 2011). Living in poverty is stressful and it increases the likelihood that children will have more developmental, academic, and mental health problems than their more economically advantaged peers (Bauman, Silver, & Stein, 2006; Booth & Crouter, 2008; Guyer et al., 2009; National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, 2004).

Research reported in this chapter was supported by grants from the National Institute of Nursing Research to Dr. Gross (#R01 NR004085), the Morton and Jane Blaustein Foundation to Dr. Eisbach, and the Leonard and Helen Stulman Foundation and Zanvyl and Isabelle Krieger Foundation to Drs. Gross and Harrison.

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Correspondence to Deborah Gross DNSc, RN, FAAN .

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Gross, D., Breitenstein, S., Eisbach, S., Hoppe, E., Harrison, J. (2014). Promoting Mental Health in Early Childhood Programs: Serving Low-Income Ethnic Minority Families. In: Weist, M., Lever, N., Bradshaw, C., Owens, J. (eds) Handbook of School Mental Health. Issues in Clinical Child Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7624-5_9

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