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Mental Health Screening in Schools: Current Methods, Perspectives, and Challenges
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Mental Health Screening in Schools: Current Methods, Perspectives, and Challenges

A special issue of International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (ISSN 1660-4601).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2026 | Viewed by 2375

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Shane L. Rogers

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, WA 6027, Australia
Interests: emotional wellbeing; mental health; measurement; screening

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Children’s mental health profoundly influences their quality of life, academic performance, and future life outcomes. Emotional difficulties in early life are linked to worse long-term well-being, making the early identification and support essential. As universal access points, schools play a crucial role in identifying students in need, and mental health screening is increasingly used to guide support and interventions.

However, school-based screening remains a complex and evolving area. Key challenges involve ensuring that tools are developmentally appropriate, culturally sensitive, and equitable across diverse populations. Questions around consent, privacy, and how best to act on screening results remain pressing. At the same time, innovations, such as digital platforms, ecological monitoring, and tiered response models, are offering new possibilities for early detection and support.

This Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health invites submissions of original research, reviews, and critical perspectives on school-based mental health screening. Topics may include tool development and validation, implementation studies, digital innovations, equity and access, ethical considerations, and student or educator perspectives. Contributions from public health, psychology, education, and related disciplines are welcome. We particularly encourage submissions that combine strong methodological rigour with practical relevance for improving student mental health outcomes.

Dr. Shane L. Rogers
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2500 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • mental health screening
  • school mental health
  • child and adolescent wellbeing
  • early identification
  • screening tools
  • emotional and behavioural difficulties
  • digital mental health
  • school-based interventions
  • equity in mental health
  • cultural considerations in mental health

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 1226 KB  
Article
Mood Monitoring in Schools: A Promising Alternative to Single-Time-Point Screening
by Shane L. Rogers, Nicole Brown, Kathryn Campbell and Matthew Goulding
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2026, 23(4), 423; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph23040423 - 27 Mar 2026
Viewed by 892
Abstract
School-based mental health screening typically relies on single-time-point assessments, which assume that students’ emotional well-being is sufficiently stable for classification based on a single measurement. The present study examined this assumption by evaluating the stability of emotional well-being classifications under repeated mood monitoring. [...] Read more.
School-based mental health screening typically relies on single-time-point assessments, which assume that students’ emotional well-being is sufficiently stable for classification based on a single measurement. The present study examined this assumption by evaluating the stability of emotional well-being classifications under repeated mood monitoring. Students from two secondary schools (United Kingdom, n = 413; Australia, n = 354) completed the Brief Emotional Experience Scale weekly across six to seven weeks. Emotional well-being classifications were examined relative to a predefined low well-being threshold to assess stability across time, and a post-monitoring survey examined students’ self-reported perceptions of the monitoring experience. Most students (78%) showed consistently above-threshold classifications across monitoring occasions, while a small proportion (5%) showed persistently low classifications. However, 17% of students fluctuated above and below the low well-being threshold across weeks, indicating that classification status for this group was sensitive to assessment timing. When monitoring data were aggregated using different decision rules, the proportion of students flagged as low well-being varied substantially, ranging from approximately 5% under a conservative stability-based criterion to around 12% when classifications were based on averaged monitoring scores. Classifications derived from averaged monitoring scores showed high agreement with single-time-point classifications, while identifying a partially different subset of students as low well-being, underscoring the sensitivity of threshold-based decisions to classification approach. Student feedback provided preliminary contextual insight into the acceptability of repeated monitoring under routine school conditions, with over half of respondents reporting that the process supported their emotional understanding. A substantial minority also reported greater inclination to talk with others about their well-being. Overall, the findings indicate that single-time-point screening may provide an incomplete basis for emotional well-being classification for some students, and that repeated assessment offers additional temporal context for interpreting threshold-based screening decisions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mental Health Screening in Schools: Current Methods, Perspectives, and Challenges)
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12 pages, 261 KB  
Article
Stakeholder Attitudes Toward the Implementation of School-Based, Universal, Mental Health Screening: Student, Caregiver, and Teacher Perspectives
by Ronald M. Rapee, Rebecca-Lee Kuhnert, Ian Bowsher, John Burns, Julie Dixon, Catherine Lourey, Lauren F. McLellan, Traci Prendergast and Viviana Wuthrich
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2025, 22(12), 1825; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22121825 - 5 Dec 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 859
Abstract
This paper reports on data from two trials about stakeholders’ attitudes to school-based mental health screening. Study 1 reports data from 6228 students from grades 4 to 12 while Study 2 reports data from 267 caregivers and 34 educators from a larger trial. [...] Read more.
This paper reports on data from two trials about stakeholders’ attitudes to school-based mental health screening. Study 1 reports data from 6228 students from grades 4 to 12 while Study 2 reports data from 267 caregivers and 34 educators from a larger trial. All three groups of stakeholders reported broadly positive attitudes toward school-based screening. Few students reported distress from questions and most agreed that schools should screen. Caregivers and educators reported positive attitudes toward the use and implementation of screening and reported few concerns about harms. Educators who conducted screening reported mostly positive experiences, although they noted high resource burden and false positives and negatives. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Mental Health Screening in Schools: Current Methods, Perspectives, and Challenges)
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