Lexington County, South Carolina, United States
Mark D. Weist received a Ph.D. in clinical psychology from VirginiaTech and completed his predoctoral internship at Duke University Medical Center. He is a Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of South Carolina (USC). In 1995, with colleagues from the University of Maryland, he established the National Center for School Mental Health, now in its 29th year of supporting this field (see www.schoolmentalhealth.org). He is also a partner on the National Center on Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (see www.pbis.org). He has edited or developed 17 books and has published and presented widely in areas of mental health-education system partnerships, school behavioral health (SBH), trauma, violence and youth, evidence-based practice, cognitive behavioral therapy, and advancing policies that support children and youth at local, state, regional, national, and international levels of scale. With colleagues, he currently leads the Southeastern School Behavioral Health Community (see www.schoolbehavioralhealth.org), and he co-directs the South Carolina School Behavioral Health Academy (see www.scsbha.org), an innovative learning management and coaching system to promote knowledge and effective skills for diverse staff and community partners interested/involved in SBH. He is also leading or co-leading a number of federally funded studies on strategies to improve SBH effectiveness, impact and scaling up. Since 2013, Mark has co-chaired the School Mental Health International Leadership Exchange (see www.smhile.org) focused on global collaboration on mental health and schools.