Stronger Mental-Health Policies in Schools Linked to Lower Academic Pressure—but Not Better Overall Well-Being

Schools that place a stronger emphasis on mental-health promotion may help adolescents feel less burdened by schoolwork, but a large study from Flanders suggests that policies alone do not automatically translate into better mental, social or physical well-being. The research, published in School Mental Health, compared mental-health strategies across 198 secondary schools and connected those findings with health and school-climate data from 3,734 students. The result is both encouraging and sobering: schools with more comprehensive mental-health policies reported lower levels of schoolwork pressure among students, yet showed no measurable advantage in psychological well-being, loneliness, life satisfaction, physical complaints or perceived support from teachers and classmates.

The study addresses a question confronting education systems worldwide: can changing the way schools organize support protect teenagers from the escalating pressures of adolescence? Schools are increasingly expected to do more than deliver academic instruction. They are asked to identify distress, prevent anxiety and depression, build social connection, reduce stigma, encourage healthy behavior and provide pathways to professional care. The researchers—Karen Schrijvers, Barbara Willems, Aafke Buyl, Benedicte Deforche and Maxim Dierckens—examined whether those ambitions were reflected in students’ everyday experiences. Rather than treating mental-health policy as a single yes-or-no feature, they analyzed multiple dimensions of school practice within the Health Promoting School framework, which views health as the product of policies, relationships, learning environments and access to support.

For the first stage, the team used school-level information from the Flemish Prevention Survey. The survey assessed how schools approached a range of health-promotion activities, including mental-health topics, safe-school-climate rules, coping with stress, social inclusion, early intervention, support providers and facilities. The investigators then applied cluster analysis, a statistical method that groups institutions with similar patterns across several variables. This person-centered approach can reveal profiles that might be hidden by a simple comparison of individual policies. The analysis identified two broad school clusters. One consisted of 123 schools, or 62.1 percent of the sample, and demonstrated a stronger overall focus on mental-health promotion. The second included 75 schools, or 37.9 percent, and still implemented multiple policies, but placed relatively less emphasis on mental health.

That distinction is important because the comparison was not between schools with policies and schools without them. Both groups reported engaging in several forms of mental-health promotion. The difference was one of intensity, breadth and apparent priority. In the stronger-policy cluster, schools tended to report more activity across areas such as addressing health topics, creating a safe climate, supporting stress coping, encouraging inclusive practices and intervening early when problems emerged. The findings therefore test a more realistic policy question: whether incremental differences in a school’s approach are associated with meaningful differences in student outcomes, rather than whether any support at all is better than none.

In the second stage, researchers linked a subsample of the school clusters to data from the Flemish Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study, an international research program that collects standardized information directly from young people. The student dataset included measures of mental, social and physical well-being, along with their perceptions of school climate. Mental well-being was assessed through psychological complaints, the WHO-5 well-being index and life satisfaction. Social well-being included general, social and emotional loneliness. Physical well-being was represented by somatic complaints, such as subjective health symptoms. School climate measures covered satisfaction with school, perceived schoolwork pressure, teacher support and support from fellow students.

Only one outcome clearly separated the two school profiles: students in the stronger-policy cluster reported significantly lower schoolwork pressure. The study did not establish that the policies caused this reduction, because the data were collected at a single point in time. Nevertheless, the association suggests that school-wide mental-health planning may influence how demanding academic life feels to students. Policies that improve coordination, create clearer support pathways, teach coping skills or encourage staff to recognize overload could reduce the sense that academic stress is unmanaged or inescapable. The result is especially relevant because perceived schoolwork pressure has been repeatedly associated with adolescent psychological complaints, although the present study did not measure that causal chain over time.

The absence of broader differences is the study’s most unexpected finding. Students in the two school clusters did not differ significantly in psychological complaints, WHO-5 scores, life satisfaction, loneliness or somatic complaints. Nor did they report meaningful differences in school satisfaction, teacher support or classmate support. In statistical terms, a school’s policy profile explained little of the variation in these outcomes. The researchers report that the intraclass correlation—the proportion of variation attributable to differences between schools rather than differences between individual students—was modest for most outcomes. For example, the school-level share was 4.85 percent for psychological complaints, 3.81 percent for the WHO-5 index, 2.65 percent for life satisfaction and roughly 2 to 3 percent for loneliness and somatic complaints. Schoolwork pressure showed a larger school-level component, at 9.93 percent, consistent with the finding that academic burden may be particularly sensitive to school-wide conditions.

A low school-level correlation does not mean schools are irrelevant. It means that most measured differences occurred between students within the same schools, rather than between schools as whole institutions. Adolescents bring different family circumstances, peer relationships, developmental histories, health conditions, economic resources and individual vulnerabilities into the same classroom. Mental health is also shaped by influences beyond the school gate, including sleep, social media, bullying, family conflict and access to clinical services. A policy may be well designed but have limited reach if students do not know about it, do not trust the adults delivering it or encounter long delays before receiving help. Conversely, schools may generate positive experiences through informal relationships that are not captured in a checklist of formal policies.

The researchers emphasize this gap between written policy and lived implementation. A school can state that it promotes mental health without routinely giving teachers time and training, integrating emotional skills into lessons, monitoring workload, involving students in decisions or coordinating with external health services. The Prevention Survey measured reported policy activity, not every concrete action experienced by students. The study also relied on a cross-sectional design, preventing conclusions about whether policies preceded improvements, whether schools responded to existing problems or whether unmeasured characteristics influenced both policy adoption and student experiences. In addition, the analysis condensed complex institutional practices into two clusters, which may conceal important differences between schools within each group.

The findings do not argue against school-based mental-health promotion. Instead, they suggest that broad policy commitments should be paired with precise evaluation of what happens in classrooms, corridors and conversations with staff. Future studies could follow schools and students over several years, measure the fidelity and intensity of implementation, and examine which components are most effective for which groups. Randomized or quasi-experimental designs could test whether reducing homework load, training teachers, strengthening peer support or improving referral systems changes outcomes. Student voices will also be essential, because a policy designed to promote well-being may feel inaccessible, stigmatizing or irrelevant if it does not match young people’s needs. For now, the clearest signal from Flanders is that stronger school mental-health policies may ease the academic pressure adolescents feel, but reducing that pressure is only one part of the much larger challenge of improving young people’s lives.