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Taking a population health approach to supporting students' social and emotional wellbeing and mental health within the education system

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    Many children and adolescents experience mental health problems during their schooling years. While schools are well placed to implement early intervention and prevention programs, they face several challenges in doing so including understanding the scale and nature of problem.

    The aim of the current project is to use information from the South Australian Wellbeing and Engagement Collection (WEC) to help understand:

    • what percentage of students have poor wellbeing
    • how does wellbeing differ based on student’s age, gender and the community they live in
    • how does wellbeing changes as children transition from primary school into high school
    • how is wellbeing related to academic achievement and school completion?

    The project will help inform schools and the Department for Education about how best to support to social and emotional wellbeing and mental health of their students.

    This project is funded through an NHMRC Partnership Grant to Dr Tess Gregory and Professor Sally Brinkman, in partnership with Mr David Engelhardt from the South Australian Department for Education.