Barbara Warren

1 INTRODUCTION There is a mental health crisis for school-aged children in the United States (Alsaad et al., 2023; Melnyk et al., 2022). School-aged children are those old enough to attend primary or secondary school from elementary (5–10 years old), middle school (11–13 years old), to high school (14–18 years old).

Introduction For 60 years, the Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services (JPN) has been a trusted source of peer-reviewed information that supports education, research, and practice in mental health and psychosocial nursing. The events of the past 2 years, along with the social isolation and other stressors caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, have brought this nation's unfinished business into sharp focus.

Introduction Despite the increasing incidence of adolescent depression, suicide and evidence-based recommendations for adolescent depression screening, 70% of teens report not discussing depression with their provider. The aim of this quality improvement project was to improve the identification and management of adolescent depression by implementing a practice-based, universal depression screening.