Preventing anxiety and depression through increasing school connectedness

Identifying the active ingredients of a whole school approach.

Addressing adolescent mental health and wellbeing at a systemic level is a public health priority. In 2021, the Welsh Government introduced the Whole-School Approach (WSA) to mental wellbeing. This approach links together the curriculum and classroom with schools’ social environment, and places strong relationships between schools and families at the heart of a long-term strategy to develop mentally healthy schools.

The long-term aim of our work is to use research data to build school environments that promote mentally healthy students and practices. In the first stage of our study, we analysed data obtained from the School Health Research Network (SHRN), a national network established within the secondary school system in Wales which has been highlighted as a key source of data to support schools when producing health action plans and developing mentally healthy schools. The SHRN initiative in Wales is an exemplar of policy plans in other UK nations and it’s also recognised internationally (e.g., World Health Organisation’s Health Promoting Schools).

During the first stage, we found that school connectedness (the extent to which young people feel connected to their school) relates to young peoples’ levels of anxiety and depression. For example, school connectedness was lower among students who had been a victim of bullying at school or felt pressure around their schoolwork and higher among students who perceived their school as providing good mental health support.

The current stage of our study involves building a school-level digital dashboard to support schools to use research data to inform their actions around student mental health and well-being. This will involve co-producing the dashboard with schools, young people, researchers, and other school health practitioners.

Our outputs will include:

1. A prototype school-level digital dashboard, with decisions made concerning which data to include, how to display the data, and tools for schools to interrogate it
2. An implementation plan for scale-up of the digital dashboard across SHRN in Wales
3. Resources for mental health researchers so that they can adapt our dashboard for their settings