Supporting Student Mental Health: Key Takeaways From School and District Staff

In extreme cases, untreated mental health issues may escalate to self-harm or suicidal ideation, underscoring the urgency of intervention. Bullying remains one of the most common stressors in schools worldwide. While beneficial, too many extracurricular activities can fill schedules to the point of overwhelming students. Friendships, peer acceptance, and social belonging are major concerns during the school years. Students today face intense academic demands, including exams, competitive grading systems, and high expectations from parents and teachers.

Developing a Mental Health Curriculum for Students

These challenges create negative feedback loops where academic struggles worsen mental health symptoms, leading to further academic decline. Mental health directly impacts academic achievement as students struggling with anxiety, depression, or trauma have difficulty concentrating, retaining information, and participating in classroom activities. Social media and technology contribute to mental health challenges through cyberbullying, social comparison, sleep disruption, and reduced face-to-face social interaction.

Feeling disconnected from peers or lacking a sense of belonging can have a profound effect on a student’s emotional well-being. Students may struggle with motivation, self-worth, or a sense of hopelessness that impacts both their academic and social lives. Research from the Data Resource Center for Child & Adolescent Health shows that children ages 6–17 who face mental, emotional, or behavioral challenges are three times more likely to repeat a grade.

Teachers express concern that students might use mental health as leverage, or use their counselor’s office as an escape from class. In one study, 100% of students who dropped out of school counseling did so because they would have needed to miss class and did not want to do so. However, claims that universally administered mental health programs improve secondary outcomes, such as academic attainment, have largely been unsubstantiated by rigorous evaluation. Diagnostic inflation is promoted whenever a physician provides an “up-diagnosis” to help a patient gain access to something valuable—like disability benefits or school services. Students with emotional disturbances in a private special-education school who, one year later, were educated in less restrictive educational settings were unlikely to experience success. Youth who have serious disorders, and who therefore most appropriately warrant mental health treatment, are some of the least likely to be educated in typical neighborhood schools.

• Schools can effectively provide comprehensive mental health care with multitiered supports adjusted to fit the frequently changing needs of students and their families.
• Quality mental health curricula can positively effect student health and build mental health literacy.
• Inclusive learning environments that acknowledge and accommodate diverse needs contribute beneficially to creating an environment where all pupils, including those with mental health challenges, feel welcomed, supported, and empowered to succeed 31,32,33.
• To address this, it is important to pay attention to promotion and prevention practice, with schools being well-placed to deliver.
• Structural solutions might include setting schoolwide guidance on behavior expectations and attendance, maintaining full schooldays, keeping doors open after school, and enforcing bans on weapons and, if relevant, bans on phones.

Roll Back Universal Mental Health Programs

If a student is struggling with their mental health, there will be warning signs. In college-aged students (young adults years old), that number jumps up to one in three. Guidance counselors at school are trained professionals to help with mental health. It is important to remember that a student’s environment affects their mental health. Some student populations have greater mental health needs than others.

How Mental Health Centers Navigate Anxiety Triggers 2026

The hubs have a school counselor on hand, and the school has trained other staff members to handle these kinds of supportive conversations. Guilford County Schools, which includes Grimsley High School, has partnered with outside donors, including the Walton Family Foundation and the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, to offer “learning hubs” that run after school and in some schools https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/02/18/when-strength-resilience-and-blackgirlmagic-is-a-burden/ on weekends. Grimsley High School teacher Sierra Hannipole checks in with a student at the Greensboro, N.C., school’s learning hub.

Somewhat surprisingly, there was a lack of digital interventions, using AI, informatics, robotics, social media, or internet-based approaches. However, some caution must be exercised as most of the long-term outcomes in terms of mental health promotion were not known and authors argued that commitment from the schools and further evaluations are required in future. They noted that there were several barriers to success, including, challenges and confusion regarding implementation, staff skills and training needs, lack of awareness, reluctance of staff, poor communication and limited coordination of the whole-school approach. Interventions delivered by school staff were also reported to be supported by instruction manuals. The support, training, and supervision of teachers during the intervention was described in five of the seven papers that reported staff involvement.