Connecting to school and each other: Towards a new paradigm of a school response to mental health
Written by: Colleen McLaughlin
9 min read
Colleen McLaughlin, Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Cambridge, UK
Where are we now? The landscape of mental health and schools
The lesson is that the goals of schooling must include social features as well as the transmission of information.
(Rutter, 1991, p. 8)
We have known for a while that school has a significant impact on young people’s later development, quality of life and mental health, and is especially important for socially, academically and emotionally vulnerable young people. Rutter’s (1991, p. 9) research demonstrated the protective role of schooling and the danger of splitting the cognitive and social elements of schooling, as both these features impact on scholastic attainment and ‘influence what happens afterwards in a child’s life in a complicated set of indirect chain reactions’. Key elements in good school experiences develop self-efficacy, meaning ‘People's beliefs about their capabilities to produce effects on their life and cont
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