Malik 1

Khalid Malik

Joyce Barnes

ENG 1201

October 25, 2020

Literature Review

In the past, very few schools took mental health seriously. Students were often left to find

their own ways of coping and moving past their problems. Recently, there has been an effort

worldwide to incorporate mental health improvements into the education system. Whether this

be less homework, more free-time, or even less school, schools have used a variety of methods to

try and change the problematic mental health of their students As many schools and universities

alter their curriculums and structures to accommodate their students’ mental needs, this poses the

question as to what seems to be the best approach to promote better mental health for students.

How should schools and universities implement changes to improve mental health of their

students?

While it is proven that many students have or show symptoms of mental health, schools

differ in opinion when it comes to the method in treating it. Tim Walker, an author for the

National Education Association, talks about in his article “Are Schools Ready to Tackle the

Mental Health Crisis?” how schools have been improving their students’ mental health by

moving away from letter grades and have been providing specialized counseling. He claims that

this is a step in the right direction and will yield positive results in the future. While this seems

like a positive change, others claim that schools simply are not doing enough. Valerie Strauss in

the article “If Americans really cared about students’ mental health, these school ratios would be

very different” says how schools aren’t doing an adequate effort to improve the mental health of
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their students. Her evidence includes how the different educational associations recommend a

psychologist for every 500-700 students, a counselor for every 250 students, and a nurse for

every 750 students. Schools are exceeding these recommendations by almost double the

recommended student per specialist. Strauss is not alone in this claim as many others claim that

schools are not doing enough for their students.

One of the most common misconceptions about student mental health is not very

widespread. This is false as according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 out of

6 children have a diagnosed behavioral, mental, or developmental disorder. It is also very

common to assume that these rates have been getting better over time. The CDC provides

information that anxiety and depression rates have been slowly increasing over time. These

statistics only help the need of urgency to find a solution to this issue.

While there are many different ways to approach mental health, Amy Eva’s article, “How

Colleges Today Are Supporting Student Mental Health” provides solutions that have yielded

positive results. This article is part of the Greater Good magazine, a science-based magazine

from University of California, Berkeley. Eva talks about implementing free mental health

screening, providing a platform for students to talk about mental health, and incorporate changes

into coursework. All of these claims are backed by experiences from other universities. These are

not the only ways to improve mental health. Many grade schools have discussed changing

school’s start times. There has also been discussion over reducing or stopping homework. These

have all shown both positive and negative results that schools would have to weigh before

implementing.

There has been enough evidence to say that a change to promote mental health in schools

is needed. Various studies have indicated a positive result and reception to these changes. To see
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how schools who have implemented mental health changes differ from those who don’t, we can

look at the article “The ‘Survey of School Promotion of Emotional and Social Health

(SSPESH)’: A Brief Measure of the Implementation of Whole-School Mental Health

Promotion.” This was a study done in Australia over approximately 600 schools. This study

proves to be credible as it performs unbiased research and a large population on which to test.

They found that schools with higher implementation had a more positive school community.

These schools had much better student social emotional learning, parent engagement, and student

support through difficult times than schools with a lower implementation of mental health

policies. This clearly shows that schools do benefit with enacting positive mental health policies

and that schools should make an effort to do so.

In the past, it was very common for schools to neglect mental health. Because of

economic competition between countries, countries like the US implemented more work on

students in an effort to improve the education of their population (Roos). events like the Cold

War and the Space Race have encouraged more education among students (Roos). Many top

countries including the US felt the need to drastically improve the education of their population

in order to be better than their opponents. (Roos). This resulted in governments heavily

encouraging more formalized classroom education upon their students (Roos). Schools increased

the workload and gave much more homework in an effort to appeal to officials’ wishes (Roos).

The decline in mental health has been an even bigger issue to recent events. Due to the

global pandemic and lockdown restrictions, there has been more stress on children and especially

university students. As Greta Anderson states in “Mental Health Needs Rise With Pandemic,”

“their (students) mental well-being has been devastated by the pandemic’s social and economic

consequences, as well as the continued uncertainty about their college education and post college
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careers.” Along with this uncertainty, workload has tremendously increased on students

(Anderson). These changes have already shown negative effects on student’s mental health.

Along with the debate of keeping homework, The Educational Leadership magazine also

provides guidelines which include to provide more meaningful homework and carefully monitor

homework so it is not too much. Students should not be doing hours of meaningless homework.

Instead, the homework should be given in order to improve the skills they learn in class

(Marzano and Pickering). This balance will ensure that the students can practice content they

learned in school without becoming too challenging or confusing.

There are various solutions to how schools should implement changes to improve mental

health. Some claim to alter coursework to incorporate mental health or to provide enough

counseling for all the students. Others may claim that the efforts so far are inadequate and that

we need to completely change the structure of the educational system. While I believe that there

is not going to be one right answer, I will need to do more research in order to find easy and

effective methods that will improve student mental health.

Work Cited

Anderson, Greta. Students in Great Need of Mental Health Support during Pandemic, 11 Sept.

2020, www.insidehighered.com/news/2020/09/11/students-great-need-mental-health-

support-during-pandemic.

“Data and Statistics on Children's Mental Health” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,

15 July 2020, https://www.cdc.gov/childrensmentalhealth/data.html. Accessed 18

October 2020.

Dix, Katherine L “The ‘Survey of School Promotion of Emotional and Social Health (SSPESH)’:

A Brief Measure of the Implementation of Whole-School Mental Health Promotion.”

School Mental Health, vol. 11, no. 2, June 2019, pp. 294–308. EBSCOhost,

search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eric&AN=EJ1229711&site=eds-live.

Eva, Amy L. “How Colleges Today Are Supporting Student Mental Health.” Greater Good, 11

Jan. 2019,

greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_colleges_today_are_supporting_student_ment

al_health.

J. Marzano, Robert and Debra J. Pickering. “Special Topic / The Case For and Against

Homework.” Educational Leadership, Vol. 64, no. 6, 2007, pp 74-79,

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/mar07/vol64/num06/The-Case-

For-and-Against-Homework.aspx Accessed 1 November 2020.

Walker, Tim. Are Schools Ready to Tackle the Mental Health Crisis? 13 Sept. 2018,

www.nea.org/advocating-for-change/new-from-nea/are-schools-ready-tackle-mental-

health-crisis.

Roos, Dave. How the Cold War Space Race Led to U.S. Students Doing Tons of Homework. 13

Aug. 2019, www.history.com/news/homework-cold-war-sputnik.

Strauss, Valerie. “Analysis | If Americans Really Cared about Students' Mental Health, These

School Ratios Would Be Very Different.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 5 Apr.

2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/02/15/if-americans-really-

cared-about-students-mental-health-these-school-ratios-would-be-very-different/.