Impact of mental health on youths’ overall wellbeing and positive outlook

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This article reports on the overall wellbeing and positive outlook of 106 pupils in a city secondary school in England. The pupils were in Year 7 (n = 38) [age 11–12], Year 8 (n = 31) [age 12–13], and Year 10 (n = 37) [age 14–15]. The demographic experienced high levels of socio-economic challenge with a range of social, emotional, and mental health needs requiring support. The percentage of Free School Meals (FSM) and Pupil Premium (PP) across the year groups ranged from 32.4% to 48.4%. All pupils were involved in school intervention to support their mental health literacy and wellbeing between April and July 2024. The findings demonstrated that in-school intervention supported pupils to understand aspects of poor mental health and maintain a positive wellbeing. In Year 7 and Year 8, 68% and 90% of pupils respectively knew what caused poor mental health which increased by 32% for Year 8 pupils and slightly decreased by 3% for year 7 pupils post-intervention. There was less surety in the causes of poor mental health amongst Year 10s with a decrease of 11% post-intervention. There was an observable statistical difference (determined by Pearson’s Correlation Coefficient) in the outlook of Year 8 pupils with just 22.6% reporting a positive general attitude to life.