International approaches to school-based mental health: Intent of the Special Issue

Abstract

This article provides an overview of the special issue on international approaches to school-based mental health. It introduces the significance of the issues associated with mental health across the world and introduces the reader to the four articles highlighting different aspects of school-based mental health. Across these four articles, information about school-based mental health (SBMH) from the United States, Canada, Norway, Liberia, Chile, and Ireland are represented. The special issue concludes with an article introducing new methodology for examining mental health from a global perspective.

Keywords

international approaches international perspective school-based mental health special issue technology

Mental health problems impact children and adolescents around the world. Internationally, approximately 20% of the youth population suffers from clinical levels of mental health illness (Belfer, 2008). In the United States, large portions of these youth fail to get the help they need (Green et al., 2013). Teachers in Iraq echo similar concerns for the unmet needs of youth struggling with mental health (Al-Obaidi, Nelson, Al Badawi, Hicks, & Guarino, 2013). In fact, England implemented a nationally mandated school-based mental health program in 2008 in an effort to address youth mental health needs called Targeted Mental Health Schools (TaMHS; Wolpert et al., 2015).

In addition to youth struggling to get the mental health supports they need, mental health impacts academic performance (i.e., Fernandez-Castillo & Gutierrez-Rojas, 2009; Murphy et al., 2015). For example, when examining 37,397 students from Chile, researchers found students whose mental health improved made more academic gains when compared to students whose mental health did not improve (Murphy et al., 2015). While there are risk, resilience, and cultural factors that mitigate mental health around the world, preventing and intervening with youth must be a global conversation.

The intent of this special issue is to highlight some of the work that is being done around the world to address mental health. The articles included in this special issue showcase collaborative work across nations, research that focuses on specific populations and enhancing protective factors, and the influence of technology on mental health. An overview of the articles included in this special issue on mental health follows.

Overview of the contributions

The special issue begins with an article that highlights collaboration across four nations on SBMH initiatives (Weist et al., 2017). This article is about the differences between stages and approaches across USA, Canada, Norway, and Liberia. The status of these nations is framed around five areas for advancement of SBMH that were developed by organizations established for promotion of SBMH. This article will help professionals to conceptualize and reflect where their regions or countries are with mental health support systems.

The next article by Reininger and Lopez (2017) is focused on protective factors in mental health, specifically parental involvement in Chile. They provide specific recommendations as a result of their research while examining how their work aligns or does not align with previous research on this topic. This article will help professionals to more strategically assist families in engaging in a system to support positive mental health for youth.

Clark, Chambers, and Barry (2017) discuss the use of technology for promoting positive mental health. Specifically, they examined how professionals may use online technology to support children and families. They had approximately 900 professionals respond to a survey. Their findings provide guidance regarding how professionals are trained to support youth and families’ mental health. This article will help professionals who conduct mental health trainings and/or those developing resources for trainings.

This special issue concludes with an examination of geography, mental health, and use of technology to examine mental health from a global scale. McLaughlin (2017) conducted a case study to examine the use of mapping software and social media to study patterns and rates of social media posts regarding depression. The software allowed for ‘real time’ data collection, which provides a unique opportunity to observe real-time changes in the status of the mental health around the world. This article is helpful to researchers in the field of mental health because it provides a unique methodology that has not been utilized to examine this topic. Eventually, this research may be key in assisting professionals to better understand the needs in specific geography regions.

Conclusion

Meeting the mental health needs of children and adolescents is a challenge internationally. Discovering ways to collaborate with professionals across the globe and learning how others are engaging in prevention, intervention, and advocacy are essential to the development of effective and comprehensive systems wide approaches. The articles included in this special issue provide some insight into current initiatives and research designed to support the continued development and growth of worldwide supports for youth struggling with mental health.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author biography

Courtney L. McLaughlin PhD, NCSP is an Associate Professor in the Educational and School Psychology Department at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, USA, where she directs the School Psychology PhD Program. Her research interests focus on school-based mental health, social media and mental health, geography and mental health, and training future school psychologists.

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