Signature Work

With teachers and non-profits, Broadleaf Health and Education Alliance and Darjeeling Ladenla Road Prerna, Dr. Cruz invented "education as mental health therapy" (Ed-MH), a form of therapy only teachers and classroom staff can deliver. Ed-MH care is interwoven into a teacher's teaching duties such that therapeutic techniques also double as teaching techniques. Further, each interaction teachers already have with students with mental health concerns is grounded in evidence-informed therapeutic techniques. Overall, this allows for applied therapy; the classroom becomes a place where students can practice and master coping and emotion regulation in real life.

Her work has been peer-reviewed in 5 publications, including showing that children’s mental health symptoms improved after receiving Ed-MH from their teachers. This innovation allows care to potentially be available everywhere teachers teach.

Dr. Cruz is collaborating with school psychologist Dr. Marisa Marraccini, PhD in the development of guidelines for how schools can support adolescents after a hospital stay for suicidal thoughts and behaviors. Adolescents are at high-risk of worsening mental health and re-hospitalization just after a hospital stay. Schools are a primary environment adolescents return to, making schools a key context that can support adolescents’ mental health recovery while they are in this particularly vulnerable period. This work has been peer-reviewed in 2 publications (Psychiatric Quarterly and School Psychology Review) thus far.