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Mental Health Promotion in Schools
Discover five steps to foster student wellbeing.
Promoting positive mental health in schools requires a comprehensive and multifaceted approach, involving a supportive environment where students can thrive emotionally, socially, and academically. Here are 5 steps schools can take that foster well-being and prevent student suicide.
For a full overview of mental health promotion in schools, view the K-12 Mental Health Promotion & Suicide Prevention Toolkit.
1. Create a safe & caring school climate.
Creating and maintaining a safe and inclusive school climate is essential for ensuring students feel valued, connected, and empowered to seek help when needed. This includes fostering school connectedness, equipping staff with the skills to support students, engaging families and the community, integrating social-emotional learning (SEL), incorporating mindfulness practices, and providing structured support during school transitions.
2. Provide training and suicide awareness education for all staff.
Ensuring all school staff receive comprehensive training on recognizing mental health concerns, suicide prevention, and fostering safe, supportive environments is a vital first step. This includes education on risk factors, referral procedures, gatekeeper programs like QPR, crisis response team preparedness, and social-emotional learning (SEL) integration.
By implementing these strategies, schools empower staff to recognize, respond to, and help prevent student mental health challenges, including suicidal ideation.
3. Implement a comprehensive health curriculum for all elementary, middle, and high school students.
By implementing a comprehensive, developmentally appropriate health curriculum that integrates suicide prevention education and social-emotional learning (SEL), schools can help nurture crucial skills and equip students with essential mental health knowledge. This curriculum should cover depression awareness, warning signs, help-seeking strategies, and coping skills, ensuring students understand how to support their own well-being and recognize when they or their peers need help.
Fostering mental health literacy and resilience enables schools to create a supportive environment that reduces risk factors and strengthens protective factors for all students.
4. Educate parents, guardians, and caregivers.
Actively educating parents, guardians, and caregivers on how to create supportive home environments reinforces student well-being and suicide prevention efforts. This includes providing information on youth suicide, warning signs, response strategies, and local resources, as well as integrating education into PTA meetings, school events, and outreach programs.
By equipping families with practical knowledge and accessible resources, schools can strengthen their role in mental health promotion and ensure students receive consistent support both at school and at home.
5. Implement a system for crisis intervention.
By proactively establishing a clear crisis intervention plan, schools can ensure they are prepared to effectively support students experiencing mental health crises. This involves forming a multidisciplinary crisis response team (CRT), developing intervention protocols, creating individualized safety and re-entry plans for at-risk students, and implementing a postvention plan. Integrating these components into the school's overall safety framework enables schools to provide timely, coordinated support for students in crisis.
Access the complete K-12 Mental Health Promotion & Suicide Prevention Toolkit.
