Mental health profiles and academic achievement in Australian school students
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(Published version)
Date
2024
Authors
Gregory, T.
Monroy, N.S.
Grace, B.
Finlay-Jones, A.
Brushe, M.
Sincovich, A.
Heritage, B.
Boulton, Z.
Brinkman, S.A.
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Journal Title
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Journal article
Citation
Journal of School Psychology, 2024; 103:101291-1-101291-15
Statement of Responsibility
Tess Gregory, Neida Sechague Monroy, Blair Grace, Amy Finlay-Jones, Mary Brushe, Alanna Sincovich, Brody Heritage, Zara Boulton, Sally A. Brinkman
Conference Name
Abstract
This study explored mental health profiles in Australian school students using indicators of wellbeing (i.e., optimism, life satisfaction, and happiness) and psychological distress (i.e., sadness and worries). The sample included 75,757 students (ages 8–18 years) who completed the 2019 South Australian Wellbeing and Engagement Collection. Latent profile analysis identified five mental health profiles consisting of (a) complete mental health (23%), (b) good mental health (33%), (c) moderate mental health (27%), (d) symptomatic but content (9%), and (e) troubled (8%). Findings provide partial support for the dual-factor model of mental health. Distal outcomes analysis on a sub-set of students (n = 24,466) found students with a symptomatic but content, moderate mental health, or troubled profile had poorer academic achievement than students with complete mental health. Implications for schools and education systems are discussed, including the need to pair clinical supports for students with psychological distress with population-level preventative health approaches to build psychological well-being.
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Available online 1 February 2024
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© 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of Society for the Study of School Psychology. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).