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What is the impact of structural and cultural factors and interventions within educational settings on promoting positive mental health and preventing poor mental health: a systematic review

Troy, David; Anderson, Joanna; Jessiman, Patricia E; Albers, Patricia N; Williams, Joanna G; Sheard, Seamus; Geijer-Simpson, Emma; ... Kidger, Judi; + view all (2022) What is the impact of structural and cultural factors and interventions within educational settings on promoting positive mental health and preventing poor mental health: a systematic review. BMC Public Health , 22 , Article 524. 10.1186/s12889-022-12894-7. Green open access

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Abstract

Mental health (MH) difficulties are on the increase among children and young people (CYP). Evidence has shown that educational settings contain both risk and protective factors for MH. This review investigated which structural and cultural factors and interventions within educational settings promote positive MH and prevent poor MH in 4-18 year olds. Searches were conducted in PsychINFO, Embase, ERIC, ASSIA and British Education Index, and reference lists from key studies and relevant systematic reviews were hand-searched. Intervention, cohort, and qualitative studies were included. Of the 62 included papers, 36 examined cultural factors (30 social/relational and six value-related) while 12 studies examined structural factors (eight organisational and four physical) and 14 studies examined multiple factors. There was strong evidence for the impact of positive classroom management techniques, access to physical activity, and peer mentoring on student MH. Studies examining the impact of positive school culture, teacher training in MH and parent involvement in school MH activities also found predominantly positive results for student MH, albeit the evidence was of lower quality or from a low number of studies. Few studies explicitly examined the impact of interventions on MH inequalities; those that did indicated limited if any reduction to inequalities. A very small number of studies suggested that interventions targeting those at risk of poor MH due to socioeconomic factors could successfully improve wellbeing and reduce depression, anxiety and behavioural problems. Studies exploring the effect of management and leadership strategies within schools, policies, and aspects of the physical environment other than green space were scarce or absent in the literature. This review highlights the need to consider the ways in which educational settings are organised, the culture that is created and the physical space in order to improve the MH of CYP.

Type: Article
Title: What is the impact of structural and cultural factors and interventions within educational settings on promoting positive mental health and preventing poor mental health: a systematic review
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1186/s12889-022-12894-7
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-022-12894-7
Language: English
Additional information: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
Keywords: Mental health, School environment, Systematic review
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health > Population, Policy and Practice Dept
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > UCL GOS Institute of Child Health
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10147219
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