School Librarians Supporting Mental Health Literacy

by Kerry Townsend, October 2021

In 2017, the iSchool at the University of Missouri received an IMLS grant to study rural school librarians as community mental health anchors. The persistent gap between mental health needs and resources for young people in this country is a public health crisis (Patel et al. 2007). One in five young people struggles with mental illness before they turn eighteen, but the average delay between the onset of their problems and the provision of treatment is ten years ("Mental Health Facts"). Most of the young people who need mental health supports do not get them. The majority of those who do receive those supports, on the other hand, do so at their schools (Green et al. 2013). School mental health programs are one of the more effective ways to address children's mental health needs and reduce the barriers to obtaining mental health supports. These programs provide a broad continuum of culturally-responsive supports ranging from promotion, prevention, and intervention for all young people and their families.

Explicit instruction in social and emotional learning serves as a proactive response to student mental health needs. Mental health literacy (MHL), the foundation for mental health prevention, intervention, and recovery, includes knowledge of and beliefs about mental health and mental illness, as well as information on how and when to seek help and/or advise others to seek help (Jorm et al. 1997). Emphasizing mental health as a key component of overall health, MHL efforts can help reduce the stigma associated with mental health/mental illness. School mental health programs can improve MHL among their student populations and the broader community through classroom-based curriculum and direct/indirect psychoeducation geared towards parents and family members. These efforts may be particularly effective in rural areas where schools are often a central focus of a community.

There is a need for practical information on how state, regional, and local education agencies can support effective school mental health programs (Maras et al. 2017). School districts across the country are learning about the most effective ways to engage with state, regional, and local education agencies as part of a broader, systems-level initiative to improve children's mental health. In Missouri, school librarians serve as community anchors for mental health literacy. They touch the lives of children, teachers, other school professionals, and often parents. With proper resources, training, and support, they make health information available to each of these patron groups.

Supporting student mental health through social and emotional learning is a very practical way to utilize current resources to benefit the larger student community and both YALSA and AASL have published research reviews that included varied ways to do so (Farrell, B. 2019; Himmelstein 2019). We wanted to know to what extent this was happening in Missouri.

Project Overview

The goal of the University of Missouri IMLS project was to provide the groundwork to develop a scalable program to help the state's school librarians provide mental health information resources to students, teachers, and other school personnel. To meet this goal, our research team conducted focus groups with Missouri school librarians. Focus group participants said they felt more comfortable supporting social and emotional learning than assisting students with severe mental health needs, which they believed school counselors were better suited to address. A survey, created from these findings, was then circulated with support of the Missouri Association of School Librarians highlighting how librarians proactively support student mental health literacy. The goal of the survey was to learn to what extent Missouri school libraries were implementing the CASEL standards through the school library program, and if so, what specific activities allowed them to do so. Information about the project, focus group findings, and a copy of the survey can be found at https://schoolmentalhealth.missouri.edu.

As the library media coordinator for Columbia Public Schools, I used the survey to learn how our district librarians' work is explicitly aligned to the CASEL standards. The COVID-19 pandemic still looms over the return to school so mental health supports will be needed now more than ever. The findings of this internal survey were used to create informed professional development sessions for district media specialists and serve as an advocacy tool promoting how we support teachers, students, and families.

Results and Discussion

The survey tool asked Missouri school librarians to identify to what extent they helped students develop the discrete skills of each CASEL standard. For example, the standard of self-awareness requires students master the ability to identify their own emotions. Following each multiple choice question was an open-ended question allowing the school librarians to explain what specific activities allowed them to arrive at that response. Following is a summary of responses provided by Columbia Public Schools (CPS) media specialists.

Self-Awareness

CPS Media Specialists help students develop self-confidence by helping them recognize their own strengths. The CASEL standard of self-awareness requires students master "the abilities to understand one's own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts" (2019/). This is largely taught in our programs through the use of literature as a self-reflection tool. Read alouds, guest speakers and displays help students recognize and regulate emotions in themselves and others.

Self-Management

The CASEL standard of self-management requires students master "the ability to manage one's emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations" (2019). In CPS, all students have a personal learning device: preschool througheighth-grade students have an iPad with a keyboard and ninth- through twelfth-grade students have a Dell laptop. CPS media specialists serve as instructional leaders for this district program. As a component of their leadership, they help students master self-management, with self-discipline and self-motivation skills most directly related to their current work. We help students organize information found in a digital format, set time management goals as related to technology usage and instruct students how to set up digital planners and curation systems. We also help students control impulses and stress when using technology for an academic purpose. STEM and makerspace programming, mindfulness corners in our media centers and events such as De-Stress December all help with this as well.

Social Awareness

The CASEL standard of social awareness is directly aligned to much of the equity work happening in school districts across the country and to the AASL standard Include. It requires students master "the ability to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts" (2019). In CPS, school librarians reported that they actively taught students to appreciate diversity more than any other social awareness skills. This was primarily accomplished through active collection development and promotion. They also reported that students learned how to see the varied perspectives of a particular topic by utilizing databases and through collaboration on Zoom and Skype. Teaching skills like grit, curiosity, and resourcefulness helped students master social awareness, particularly when taught through student collaboration.

Responsible Decision Making

We primarily teach responsible decision making through direct instruction in our library media programs. Responsible decision-making requires students learn how to "make caring and constructive choices about personal behavior and social interactions across diverse situations" (2019). As lead Project Lead the Way Launch lead teachers, CPS elementary media specialists teach students how to use the design process to identify and solve problems. The ability to solve problems is included in the teaching of the research process as well. Responsible decision making is also a large component of the AASL standard of Engage and many other content standards as well. The intentional integration of this skill helps student achieve success in a variety of contexts.

Relationship Skills

Relationship skill development is directly correlated with the AASL standard of Collaborate. CPS school librarians help students communicate effectively and learn how to work in teams. These two skills are a component of the CASEL standard of Relationship Skills: "the ability to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups" (2019).

Conclusion

None of these findings were a surprise to me as the district library coordinator. I assumed we leveraged their library collections to help students develop academic, social, and emotional learning skills. Daily, I witnessed CPS Media Specialists help students and teachers use technology tools for learning. What was a surprise, however, was how valuable the results are as an advocacy tool. I now have concrete ideas to share with other district leaders who may not understand how our work connects to theirs. It is also a great way for building level media specialists to draw from a list of ideas that are working across the district. We meet regularly and share ideas with one another, but not in such a formal way. Going forward, I plan to incorporate this model of data gathering into my work as an administrator. There is a great deal of powerful research being published thanks to federal grant support from entities like the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The tools of these studies are available for use by practitioners like me and can be used to analyze the systems in which we work in order to improve them.

Works Cited and Further Reading

AASL. National School Library Standards. ALA, 2018.https://standards.aasl.org/framework/.

Adkins, Denice, Beth Brendler, and Kerry Townsend. "Rural School Libraries Anchoring Community Mental Health Literacy." Presented at the Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Libraries conference, 2019.

CASEL- Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. "Core SEL Competencies," 2019. https://casel.org/core-competencies/.

Farrell, Bernie. "Research Roundup: Social Emotional Learning." Young Adult Library Services 17, no. 2 (2019).

Green, Jennifer Greif et al. "School Mental Health Resources and Adolescent Mental Health Service Use." Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 52, no. 5 (2013): 501–10.

Himmelstein, Drew. "How Social-Emotional Learning Transforms Students and Schools." School Library Journal (April 1, 2019). https://www.slj.com/?detailStory=how-social-emotional-learning-transforms-students-and-schools.

Jorm, Anthony F., et al. "Mental Health Literacy: A Survey of the Public's Ability to Recognise Mental Disorders and their Beliefs about the Effectiveness of Treatment." Medical Journal of Australia 166, no. 4, (1997): 182-186.

Kaaland, Christie. "The School Library's Role during Critical Times." School Library Monthly, 31 no. 4 (2015): 32-34.

Lukenbill, Bill, and Barbara Immroth. "School and Public Youth Librarians as Health Information Gatekeepers: Research from the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas." School Library Media Research 12 (2009): 1-30.

Maras, Melissa,et al. "Planning, Implementing, and Improving Rural School Mental Health Programs." In Handbook of Rural School Mental Health, edited by Kurt D. Michael and John Paul Jameson. Springer, 2017.

"Mental Health Facts: Children & Teens." National Alliance on Mental Illness., n.d. https://www.nami.org/NAMI/media/NAMI-Media/Infographics/Children-MH-Facts-NAMI.pdf.

Patel, Vikram, et al. "Mental Health of Young People: A Global Public-Health Challenge." The Lancet 369, no. 9569 (2007): 1302–13.