Community Expectations of School Teachers Supporting Rural Students’ Mental Health (76727)
Session Chair: Brian Moore
Wednesday, 27 March 2024 10:30
Session: Session 1
Room: Room 609
Presentation Type: Oral Presentation
Mental health (MH) is a major societal issue with an estimated annual global cost of $ 2.5 trillion (USD) (World Health Organization, 2016). As many MH problems onset during youth, early intervention is critical for addressing the longer-term impacts of poor MH. However, according to the Australian Medical Association (2018), MH and psychiatric care are “grossly” underfunded in Australia. One consequence of this is that school teachers are increasingly expected to perform frontline MH provider roles (Australian Government Productivity Commission [AGPC], 2020), despite little training or resources (Andrews et al., 2014).
Schools have been positioned as a setting to conduct mental health work, given schools provide significant access (Kang-Yi, 2018) to the one in seven Australian youth experiencing mental health disorders (Lawrence et al., 2015). However, many pre-service teacher education programs do not explicitly address mental health training (Ohrt et al., 2020), which may not occur at all (Armstrong et al., 2019). This may explain why many teachers report low confidence to carry out roles in mental health care (Moon et al., 2017). Further, it is important to note that the role of teachers in promoting wellbeing and preventing mental ill-health has never been clearly articulated by Australian governments (AGPC, 2020).
This presentation reports results from a pilot study examining community expectations of teacher roles in supporting rural students’ mental health, will discuss a practical working definition of this role, and consider related curriculum developments including the use of online simulation to train teachers for this role.
Authors:
Brian Moore, Charles Sturt University, Australia
About the Presenter(s)
Dr Brian Moore is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at Charles Sturt University in Australia
See this presentation on the full schedule – Wednesday Schedule
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