Mental Health in Education: Risks, Interventions, and Access to Care

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel brings together papers that examine both the challenges to youth mental health and the policy environments that may help address them. The first paper investigates the psychological effects of campus gun violence, using a novel merger of incident-level data and student survey responses to show that exposure to gun violence worsens students' mental health, life satisfaction, their sense of belonging, and perceptions of safety. In doing so, it highlights how traumatic events in educational settings can cause meaningful and persistent harm to students' well-being.

The panel also includes two papers that evaluate policy-relevant interventions delivered through schools.  One examines the effects of the TRAILS Early Intervention program, which trains school-based mental health professionals in cognitive-behavioral therapy, and finds improvements in student disciplinary outcomes, along with suggestive evidence of longer-run mental health benefits. The other paper is a mixed-methods study that analyzes the implementation and take-up of school-based telehealth services in Tennessee. In contrast to the TRAILS study, this paper emphasizes that, despite telehealth’s promise as a strategy to expand access to care, utilization remained low and many schools struggled to integrate these services into their daily routines. The findings suggest the success of telehealth depends on substantial organizational investment, including dedicated school staff, adequate space and privacy, and strong partnerships with external providers.

Together, these papers position schools not only as places where mental health risks are experienced, but also as critical institutions for the prevention, identification, and support of students’ mental health needs.

The fourth paper studies whether proximity to licensed mental health facilities affects school disciplinary outcomes in North Carolina. It complements the panel by shifting attention from mental health risks and school-based interventions to an important consequence of unmet need: school discipline. Using longitudinal administrative data, the study asks whether greater community-based access to mental health services changes student disciplinary outcomes. In doing so, it underscores that schools are not only sites of prevention and service delivery, but also institutions where unmet mental health needs can be translated into consequential disciplinary responses.

Overall, the panel speaks directly to core concerns in public policy by examining how schools, colleges, and health-service systems can either exacerbate or alleviate mental health challenges among young people. The papers are complementary in both topic and method: they consider traumatic exposure, therapeutic intervention, implementation barriers, and access to care, while drawing on administrative records, surveys, medical claims, interviews, and novel linked datasets.  Taken together, they offer a broad yet cohesive perspective on youth mental health as a policy issue embedded in educational institutions and the public systems that surround them.

Policy Area

• Education

Chair

• Liliane Nienstedt, Vanderbilt University

Discussants

• Dave Marcotte, American University

• Carolyn J. Heinrich, Vanderbilt University

Organizer

• Cecilia Rodriguez Ingold, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Individual Presentations

• Campus-based Gun Violence and the Mental Health of Students - Presenting Author: Cecilia Rodriguez Ingold, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Impact of a School-Based Program to Improve Mental Health on Student Outcomes - Presenting Author: Catherine Armstrong Asher, University of Michigan

• Take Up and Implementation of School-Based Telehealth in Tennessee - Presenting Author: Sara White, Vanderbilt University

• Mental Health Access and School Discipline: Evidence from North Carolina - Presenting Author: Harneet Kaur, University of Arkansas