Stakeholder attitudes toward the implementation of school-based, universal, mental health screening: student, caregiver, and teacher perspectives

This paper reports on data from two trials about stakeholders’ attitudes to school-based mental health screening. Study 1 reports data from 6228 students from grades 4 to 12 while Study 2 reports data from 267 caregivers and 34 educators from a larger trial. All three groups of stakeholders reported broadly positive attitudes toward school-based screening. Few students reported distress from questions and most agreed that schools should screen. Caregivers and educators reported positive attitudes toward the use and implementation of screening and reported few concerns about harms. Educators who conducted screening reported mostly positive experiences, although they noted high resource burden and false positives and negatives.