Students are facing increasing academic, social, emotional, and digital pressures, while schools and colleges are being asked to support rising levels of student distress, avoidance, anxiety, sadness, anger, and disengagement. The Mind-Action-Mood CBT Program (M&M-CBT; McGinn, 2019; McGinn, Shen, & Fried, 2024) was developed to meet this growing need by helping students build the coping capacity, emotional resilience, flexible thinking, and healthy action skills they need to manage stress, tolerate discomfort, reduce avoidance, and stay engaged in academic and social life.

M&M-CBT is a school- and college-based CBT program that trains core school and campus staff — including teachers, faculty, counselors, clinicians, student affairs professionals, and other student-support staff — to teach practical CBT skills across multiple levels of student need. The program gives schools and colleges a shared CBT-based language and a structured set of tools that can be used in classrooms, advisory programs, counseling offices, student support services, residence life, first-year experience programs, and other school or campus settings.

M&M-CBT is built on the idea that resilience grows through practice. Students receive structured opportunities to learn and use CBT skills when stress, discomfort, uncertainty, conflict, and strong emotions show up — helping them build mental fitness, effective coping, stronger relationships, and the ability to take constructive action over time.

M&M-CBT can be implemented as Tier 1 universal prevention, Tier 2 targeted student support, or Tier 3 focused CBT skill support, depending on the needs of the school or college community. Core staff receive a 3- to 4- day training workshop followed by ongoing consultation to support implementation.