Exploring mental health in schools among adolescents in Italy

Mental health problems are a serious public health concern, especially among adolescents. Research empathizes the key role of the school context to promote the wellbeing of students. This contribution discusses findings of a study aimed at exploring the associations between student’ mental health, teacher-student relationships and school climate. The sample included 3868 adolescents attending high school in Italy (14-18 years). The Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (Keyes, 2002) was administered to assess students’ mental health. The quality of the teacher-student relationship was assessed using the Student-Teacher Relationship Questionnaire (Murray & Greenberg, 2001), and students’ school climate perception was measured using the Sense of Community in the School questionnaire (Samdal at al., 1998). Mean levels of students’ mental health, teacher-student relationships perceptions and school climate significantly decreased over time. Furthermore, gender differences were observed with males showing significantly greater levels of mental health, school climate and teachers-student relationship (from p>0.02 to p>0.0001). The findings provide important implications emphasizing that students’ mental health is significantly associated with student-teacher relationship and school climate. Results will be also discussed in the light of adolescence developmental tasks.