Schools play role in adolescent mental health, study finds

School environments play a role in early adolescents’ mental health, a study found.

The findings are from the My Resilience in Adolescence (MYRIAD) study, a collaborative survey between various universities in the United Kingdom. The researchers use the data to explore school-level influences on the mental health of young people, according to Tamsin Ford, PhD, a professor of child psychiatry at the University of Cambridge.

“Despite the direct influence of schools on mental health being small in our study, this does not mean schools should stop themselves short of doing something really valuable to improve a young person’s mental health,” Ford said in a press release.

“A positive school climate seems key, and there are a range of whole school and targeted interventions that work,” Ford said. “I would add that even small school-level effects may translate into more significant impacts if the substantial future health, economic, and societal costs of mental ill health are considered.”

A total of 26,885 students aged between 11 and 14 years from 85 schools were surveyed to establish young people’s mental health and to determine which school and broader factors were important.

The responses demonstrated that schools accounted for only 2.4% of the variation in social-emotional-behavioral difficulties, 1.6% of the variation in depressive symptoms and 1.4% of the variation in well-being.

“In the school community, a higher percentage of free school meal eligibility was associated with higher levels of psychopathology in pupils (B = 0.06; 95% CI, 0.03 to 0.09; P < .001), even while accounting for the percentage of pupils receiving special educational needs or disabilities support and school ethnic composition,” the researchers wrote. “A higher proportion of white British pupils in schools was correlated with higher levels of psychopathology (B = 0.02; 95% CI, 0.01 to 0.03; P < .001) and lower levels of well-being (B = 0.02; 95% CI, 0.03 to 0.01; P = .001), when accounting for the percentage of pupils receiving special educational needs or disabilities support and free school meal eligibility.”

Although schools explained only small amounts of variation in mental health, school climate was nonetheless associated with mental health.

“Consistent with the limited previous research, we found that schools accounted for only 1.4% to 2.4% of the variability in mental health of early adolescents,” the researchers wrote. “Several factors explained this between-school variability; most related to the broader school context and characteristics of the pupil population, rather than operational features of the school. Specifically, schools in urban locations, with a greater proportion of adolescents eligible for free school meals and with more white British pupils, were attended by pupils with poorer mental health.”

The study also found that children who attended schools with a higher proportion of white pupils had poorer mental health than children in schools with more ethnically diverse student bodies.

“Earlier studies from the United Kingdom suggest that young people from ethnic minorities had a higher prevalence of mental health conditions, but the results of the present study echo recent large mental health surveys of children and adolescents in the United Kingdom,” the researchers wrote. “Recent austerity policies in the United Kingdom have resulted in drastic reductions in support for children, families, and schools, which were previously less accessed or accessible to ethnic minorities. Young people from ethnic minorities may therefore have been less adversely affected by these policies. In addition, there is some evidence that psychological distress may be related to ethnic density. Specifically, there could be a possible beneficial effect of more culturally diverse environments for minority students, but majority students seem to be insensitive to this effect.”

Co-author Willem Kuyken, PhD, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Oxford, said in the release that as children transition back to in-person learning, their mental health should be a priority.

“As young people transition back to school, we must prioritize their mental health and consider what we can do to promote their well-being,” Kuyken said. “Schools are potentially well placed to do this as young people spend much of their waking life at school; however, policymakers also need to look at any number of factors outside schools that are consistently associated with poor mental health — namely deprivation and social inequality.”

References:

Schools have a small but important role in early adolescents’ mental health. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/938878. Published Dec. 23, 2021. Accessed Dec. 28, 2021.