A Year 9 student, let’s call her Maya, had begun spending long stretches of the day in the corridor or in the toilets. Not disruptive, not distressed, just present but not participating. When I asked a member of staff, they replied, “She keeps leaving lessons - avoiding Maths again.”
Later, Maya told me:
“The corridor is the only place I can just be, sometimes I just need space.”
Her words are not unique to one school, country, or system. Across continents, young people are finding creative, quiet, often misunderstood ways of signalling distress, including withdrawal, avoidance and shutdowns because they have few safer avenues to communicate what they cannot yet articulate.
International research paints a consistent picture. Rising levels of anxiety, depression, trauma, and loneliness among children and adolescents are being documented from Finland to Kenya, Canada to India, the UK to Australia. UNESCO, UNICEF, and the WHO all warn of a growing mental health crisis among young people worldwide.
And in almost every national context, when external services become overstretched or inaccessible, schools absorb the unmet need.
Schools have become the default mental health system for children, even though they were never structurally designed for this role. Bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory helps explain this: schools sit at the intersection of home, community, health care, digital environments, and broader social systems. When any of these systems fail, the pressure converges inside the classroom.
Teachers feel this intensely. Their roles now extend beyond pedagogy to include elements of counselling, crisis management, mediation, and care work. Yet the training, structures, and policies that would support this expanded professional identity differ dramatically across countries and often lag behind the realities of practice.
There is no shortage of wellbeing campaigns. Across the globe, schools have embraced mental health awareness weeks, resilience curricula, mindfulness sessions, and trauma-informed approaches. These interventions matter. They signal a growing recognition that wellbeing and learning are inseparable.
But awareness without capacity creates a dangerous paradox.
Students are told to “reach out”, “talk to someone”, or “ask for help,” yet the adults they turn to are often unsupported, overworked, or left navigating fragmented referral pathways. In many countries, including high-income ones, access to child and adolescent mental health services involves long waiting lists, high thresholds, or complete absence of provision in rural or underserved areas.
This mismatch between what students are encouraged to disclose and what systems can respond to raises deep ethical questions for educators worldwide.
Globally, promising models are emerging:
- Finland integrates multi-professional teams (counsellors, psychologists, nurses) directly into school treating wellbeing as core provision.
- New Zealand’s Te Whare Tapa Whā model embeds cultural, relational, and spiritual wellbeing into school policy and practice.
- Canada and Australia have strengthened school-based mental health leadership, linking schools with community care pathways.
- Kenya and South Africa increasingly use community-based and church-based support systems to supplement limited clinical provision.
Common across successful systems is the understanding that mental health is relational, ecological, and interdisciplinary. It requires:
- Stable mental health roles within schools
- Partnerships with external services
- Clear and consistent referral pathways
- Training and supervision for staff
- Policy frameworks that fund care as seriously as academic performance
In essence: proactive, connected systems rather than reactive, individualised responses.
Maya’s words echo a truth that transcends national borders: emotional safety is the foundation for learning, identity formation, and belonging.
As the new University of Liverpool’s Institute of Education engages with students, researchers, and partners across the world, the challenge is to move beyond crisis-response thinking and build educational systems capable of holding the psychological realities of the 21st century.
The question is no longer whether mental health belongs in education.
The question is whether our global systems are willing to reimagine schooling itself so that health, yes, that includes mental health, is at the very core of education.