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School-based mental health support systems are becoming an essential part of student education. Because children and youth spend so much of their time in school, it plays an ever more important role in supporting safe and supportive environments in which children, teens, and families have access to prevention, early intervention, and treatment of mental health. But a recent report from Mental Health America (MHA) revealed that most states are not prepared to deal with student mental health. The analysis reported that just 14 states had fully expanded Medicaid to cover mental health services in schools, and only a handful had legislation requiring mental health education. The lack of access and education leaves schools unprepared to deal with mental health issues among students, which have been worsened by the pandemic. The report called for state and federal officials to prioritize improving mental health education, support, and services as students get settled back in school.1
A study by Dix, Slee, Lawson & Keeves found that implementing effective programs is key to improving academic functioning. The difference between implementing an effective versus ineffective program is equivalent to approximately 6 months of schooling. Furthermore, various social-emotional skill domains like self-efficacy, social connections, managing distress, etc. were effective predictors of a student making positive progress towards high school graduation and whether a student had dropped out or failed approximately 15% of their courses (Davis, Solberg, de Baca, & Gore, 2014).2
Schools provide a natural setting in which students can receive needed support and services and where families feel comfortable and trusting in accessing such support. The importance of mental health screening and education cannot be stated more clearly. Mentally healthy students are more likely to:
Although many students are mentally healthy, approximately 1 in 5 school-aged children and youth have a diagnosable mental health disorder. Canadian researchers found that older teens living with depression are twice as likely to drop out of high school than their peers without depression.
“The role of depression in deciding to drop out was underestimated in previous studies because the timing was not properly considered,” said the lead author and associate professor of the school of psycho-education at the University of Montreal, Dr. Veronique Dupere. “Depression is not stable. It tends to come and go.”4
Traditional methods have been reactive to mental health concerns and have addressed mental health issues as a “one and done”. What is needed is a proactive approach which not only identifies active mental health issues, it also identifies opportunities to intervene and prevent mental health issues from developing. This may be accomplished by implementing an ongoing process to Screen/ Measure/ Train & Enrich. School leadership can support their students and educators by providing anonymous mental health screening, aggregate reporting to measure the impact of programs offered, as well as ongoing training and enrichment programs. One such program we really like is Pathways to Empower. It provides the fundamentals for quality, comprehensive Mental Wellness Education, which includes: