Students’ mental health is one of the biggest challenges facing schools.
In Australia, half of all adult mental health challenges emerge before the age of 14. It is also estimated that more than 50% of children experiencing mental health challenges are not receiving professional help.
Schools are increasingly being asked to help identify students who may be struggling and to help identify them early.
One way schools do this is through mental health screening. Students complete a questionnaire, and those whose score particular results may be flagged for follow-up.
When screening is used, it is often conducted at a single point in time. But when it comes to mental health, we know it’s important to notice patterns or changes over time.
Does this means schools are making decisions about support for students based on unreliable snapshots?
Our research
To explore this, our new study tracked students’ emotional experiences over time.
We asked 767 students aged 11-15 years old from schools in Australia and the UK, to complete a very brief check-in, repeatedly across six to seven weeks.
Each check-in took around one to two minutes and used a brief, structured measure of emotional wellbeing. For example, students rated how much they had been feeling emotions such as happiness, calmness, worry or sadness.
Students also reported on related aspects of their day-to-day functioning, such as sleep, concentration, exercise, and quality of relationships. Together, this allowed us to track changes in both emotional experience and everyday functioning over time, rather than relying on a single snapshot.
There is often concern that mental health screening might feel burdensome or intrusive, particularly in school settings. So we also asked students about their experience of this process.
What we found
What we found challenges some common assumptions.
First, students’ scores were not as stable as single screenings assume.
In our study, 17% of students moved above and below the low wellbeing threshold during the monitoring period. This means a single-time-point assessment could easily get the wrong impression about how they are really doing, depending on whether it captured a “better” or “worse” point in time.
So a student who happens to have a “good day” during a one-off screening might be missed entirely. Conversely, a student having a particularly bad day might be flagged when they would not typically require support. In both cases, decisions are being made on incomplete information.
What happens over time?
Second, looking at patterns over time provided a clearer and more reliable indication of student’s mental health. Repeated observations made it easier to distinguish between temporary fluctuations and more persistent difficulties. This is exactly the kind of distinction that matters when deciding who may need additional support.
In our research, when focusing on a single time point, about 12% of students scored below a threshold and would be flagged for follow-up. This is broadly consistent with other recent school-based screening research, which has identified around 10–20% of students as at risk and needing follow up at a given time point.
However, when we instead looked at students who were consistently below this threshold over time, that figure dropped to around 5%.
What do students think?
As with any self-report measure, responses depend on students answering honestly. While some students may under-report or over-report their experiences, brief and repeated check-ins may help reduce the impact of any single biased response by focusing on patterns over time rather than one-off answers.
Students in our study were also generally receptive to regular check-ins. More than half reported the regular check-ins helped them better understand how they were feeling. Rather than being seen as an added burden, the process appeared to allow some students to think about how they were feeling. This kind of regular reflection may support emotional awareness. Research shows emotional awareness is is an important part of maintaining wellbeing.
What now?
Our research suggests brief, repeated check-ins can provide a more accurate basis for decision-making around students’ mental health.
It also suggests we could potentially reduce the number of students flagged for further support. This finding is especially important when schools say they often do not begin mental health screening because they don’t have enough resources to provide any follow-up required.
Checks-ins do not need to be expensive or labour-intensive. They can be done via a short survey on phones or tablets.
More broadly, we need to shift how we think about emotional wellbeing in schools. Mental health is not static. It changes over time. Our methods for assessing it should reflect that.
