Students’ Mental Health: The importance of the teacher’s role and training

Abstract

The adverse outcomes of society's mental health require questioning and rethinking the school's traditional role, especially the teachers' role facing this crucial dimension of the students' development. These professionals collaborate every day on the students' progress through the teachers' practices in the classroom, and the relations established every day in the educational context. Therefore, this collaboration must go beyond the contents and skills related to traditional disciplines included in the schools' curricula. This article's objective is to propose action lines, addressing the practices and possibilities that teachers' training could offer addressing the support of the students in the mental health dimension, divided into three axes through a literature review. These establish the teacher-student relationship, including strategies that foster a positive school climate and detect possible communication issues in students with the corresponding network. For this, it is required an approach of the school as a community that supports the students' mental health's enhancing processes, but mostly the inclusion of pre and in-service teachers' training processes. The primary purpose is to offer more tools that allow the development and early intervention facing possible issues linked to this dimension.