A Critical Review of Existing Teacher Training Programs in Student Mental Health

• In Event: The Role of Teachers in Identifying and Supporting Students With Mental Health Problems

Abstract

Overview
Whereas earlier talks in this presentation discussed assessments to identify the training needs of teachers, this final presentation will include a critical review of existing research on training programs designed to increase teacher knowledge about mental health and improve the effectiveness of their referrals and interventions. Studies find that most teachers receive little or no training in identifying and responding to student mental health needs (Reinke et al., 2011). In this presentation we will describe several programs and the research on each of them.

Programs
We will present several of the most popular mental health training programs for teachers, including: Mental Health First Aid (Jorm, Kitchener, Sawyer, Scales, & Cvetkovski, 2010); Question, Persuade, Refer (Wyman et al., 2008), Typical or Troubled (Daly, 2010), and At-Risk for Middle School Educators and At-Risk for High School Educators (https://www.kognito.com/products/pk12/). Some of these programs are designed to train all staff within a school, while others train specific members of school staff.

Critical Review
We will describe some of the challenges in evaluating the effectiveness of programs designed to train teachers in providing mental health supports for students, including determining relevant outcome measures and optimal study design. Existing research on teacher training programs will be described with a particular focus on these issues. Further, we will discuss training programs in the context of the Gateway Provider Model (Stiffman, Pescosolido, & Cabassa, 2004) and the particular youth, provider, and organizational factors that they may influence.

Future Directions
Through this review we will highlight for conference participants strengths and limitations of existing training programs for teachers. We will describe the potential benefits of individualizing interventions to meet the diverse training needs of teachers, including attending to their attitudes about mental health and readiness to make changes in their behavior, drawing from the Transtheoretical Model (Prochaska & DiClimente, 1982). We will identify critical areas for future research to improve the mental health services and supports that teachers can help to facilitate for students.

Authors

• Suzanne Vinnes, Boston University

• Claire Brown, Boston University

• Rebecca Levine, Boston College