Schools are prioritizing students’ mental health, and there are many tools and resources to choose from. CDC created this action guide as a place to start. It can help school and district leaders build on what they are already doing to promote students’ mental health and find new strategies to fill in gaps.
These 2024 editions contain major updates and an and easy-to-follow format complete with action steps, best practices, examples from the field, and more.
In March of 2023, the U.S. Department of Education released Guiding Principles for Creating Safe, Inclusive, Supportive, and Fair School Climates for students and school staff, featuring specific recommendations for evidence-based practices that allow students to learn, grow, and be successful.
The Office of the U.S. Surgeon General released a general advisory report in May 2023 on public health concerns related to youth’s use of social media. This report on Social Media and Youth Mental Health includes research on the positive and negative impacts of social media use on youth health and well-being. Read about what policymakers, technology companies, parents and caregivers, youth, and researchers can do to create safer and healthier online environments for children.
The Center for Wellbeing in School Environments (WISE) works with Washington DC school communities to reduce mental health and educational disparities.
This free online course provides educators with information on implementing trauma-sensitive strategies in the school setting. Courses focus on understanding trauma, creating a trauma-informed school environment, and much more.
My Life is Worth Living™ is the first animated series that models the human connection shown to be protective against suicide. The series tells stories of characters who face some of the most difficult issues that young people deal with and shows their evolution in the key decision: that life is worth living.
Using Multi-tiered Systems of Support to Address Students’ Mental Health: An Evidence-Based Approach
This REL Northeast & Islands webinar provides an overview of MTSS, a three-tiered framework of classroom-based and schoolwide interventions that many districts and schools use to meet the academic and/or social-emotional needs of students.
The well-established connection between positive school climate and student success means that educators need to know how the climate at their school is faring. This information is particularly important now, after the prolonged disruptions in schooling from the COVID-19 pandemic. Getting and using feedback from students themselves about their school experiences is key to understanding school climate. But how do school and district leaders know which measures to use?
In this Knowledge Alliance (KA) blog post, KA’s summer intern, Julianna Collado, met with Michelle Woodbridge and Nancy Perez from SRI International to discuss their work identifying and implementing better mental health support for educators. Please read the full blog post on the Knowledge Alliance’s site.