Student Peer-Facilitators for School-Based Mental Health and Psychosocial Support: A Scoping Review

School-based peer facilitation may extend mental health and psychosocial support by connecting students’ informal networks with educational services. This scoping review mapped the roles, activities, preparation, safeguards, implementation conditions, and outcomes of student peer-facilitators in primary and secondary schools. Following JBI guidance and PRISMA-ScR, records were screened using the Population–Concept–Context framework. Nineteen sources were screened, and ten studies published from 2019 to 2025 were included. The evidence comprised six primary studies and four syntheses covering mental health education, emotional support, mentoring, coping assistance, school-engagement coaching, and multicomponent programs. Peer-facilitators served as educators, role models, supportive listeners, mentors, and connectors rather than mental health professionals. Recipient outcomes were more consistently favorable for mental health literacy, coping, social connection, participation, and school engagement than for symptom reduction or professional help-seeking. Facilitators reported gains in knowledge, confidence, communication, empathy, self-esteem, empowerment, and participation; however, emotional burden, guilt, role conflict, workload, and confidentiality difficulties were inadequately assessed. Recruitment criteria, competency assessment, supervision, debriefing, referral, crisis escalation, digital safety, and facilitator protection were inconsistently reported. Peer facilitation therefore appears most appropriate as a bounded, supervised component of wider school support systems, with safeguards, referral pathways, adult oversight, and monitoring of outcomes for recipients and facilitators.