school-based interventions

  • Mark Weist

    School mental health, with Professor Mark D Weist

    We caught up with the presenter – Professor Mark D Weist, Professor in the School of Community Health Sciences at the University of South Carolina and Director of the South Carolina School Behavioral Health Academy – to talk about the topic itself, his career, and his hopes for the event.

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  • children in school playground

    Promoting Mental Health in Schools: Evidence-Based Strategies for a Stepped, Collaborative Approach

    Recent research has highlighted the advantages of comprehensive school mental health (SMH) systems, particularly those organised around Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS). MTSS provides a coherent structure integrating prevention, early intervention and intensive support to meet diverse student needs (Barrett et al., 2018) acknowledging the interdependence of academic outcomes, mental health and social-emotional development.

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  • Self-harm E-learning for School Staff: Co-production of the SORTS Toolkit

    Self-harm among adolescents is increasing in prevalence and there is a lack of evidence-based, whole-school approaches to support students and staff with their response to self-harm. This blog discusses the need for a whole-school approach to self-harm training in schools alongside the SORTS study, which used co-production methods to develop the Supportive Response to Self-Harm in Schools (SORTS) toolkit.

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  • Catherine Canavan Shrestha

    TeaLeaF- task shifting children’s mental health care to primary school teachers in the Darjeeling Himalayas of West Bengal, India

    TeaLeaf-Mansik Swastha (Teachers Leading the Frontlines- Mental Health) is a research-led community-based intervention which sees the “shifting” of mental health care to primary school teachers in the Darjeeling Himalayas of West Bengal using evidence-based therapy techniques.

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  • Ariadna Albajara Saenz

    The Sustainability of the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Programme: Insights from UK Primary School Teachers

    The current youth mental health crisis highlights the need for preventive and early intervention strategies like the Incredible Years programmes. The Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management programme has shown positive effects on teachers’ classroom management strategies and pupil mental health. In this blog, we discuss teachers’ views on the sustainability of the programme, necessary to maintain its desired benefits in the longer term.

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  • Dave McPartlan

    Redistributing power in schools and how this can impact young people’s agency and identity

    Recent Guardian articles have been reporting how this year’s GCSE exam results have been impacted by the crisis in young people’s mental health. There is increasing concern among school leaders about school absence and abnormal levels of anxiety. As I embark on the third blog related to my research, I explore how the research processes I developed, positively impacted the young people involved and acts as a counter to much of what young people see as being wrong with schools.

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  • Dave McPartlan

    Developing schools to enhance young people’s mental health

    Research has shown that many risk factors influence young people’s mental health needs, one of which is school expectations. The youth mental health crisis continues, with one in six young people (aged 6-16) having a probable mental health problem. My research aimed to determine what young people thought of their mental health strategy. However, the way in which the research process developed suggests schools have much more to offer than just specific mental health support.

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  • Professor Barry Carpenter OBE, CBE

    Improving research-informed practice in schools

    We have recently launched an initiative aimed at teachers, to enable schools to access and put to use resources that can genuinely make a difference to the mental wellbeing and educational outcomes of young people.

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  • Children's Mental Health Week

    Children’s Mental Health Week 2022

    The theme of this year’s Children’s Mental Health Week is ‘Growing Together’. Our Vision is ‘Sharing best evidence, improving practice’, and to this end we urge you to take a look at the learning opportunities on our website and to share with your networks.

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  • Emma Saneson and Prof. Tamsin Ford CBE

    Identifying mental health difficulties in children & young people: the role of schools

    Schools may be a particularly good place to pick up on the early signs of mental health difficulties. Emma Soneson and Tamsin Ford outline the reasons for this

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