Unresolved mental health issues are associated with numerous negative
outcomes, both short and long term, for school-aged children. Although effective
interventions exist for many mental health conditions, primary prevention of these
maladies, whenever possible, is clearly in a child’s best interest. Mental health
promotion in schools is a viable medium for nurturing prevention. Among the most
potent influences schools can affect in the efforts to promote mental health are risk and
resiliency factors in a child’s environment. Exposure to risk factors is strongly
associated with negative mental health outcomes, while the presence of protective
factors is strongly predictive of positive mental health outcomes and ultimately
pronounced improvements in quality of life. School performance can ultimately be
among the most formidable risk or resilience factors, depending on the qualitative and
quantitative experience of the individual student. Further, the school has the ability to
exert influence on other risk and resilience factors in a student’s environment. This
chapter delineates risk and resilience factors that have been found to profoundly affect
mental health and quality life, evidence-based practices that have been applied to foster
positive outcomes, and provides sufficient foundation on the current knowledge base on
risk and resilience to facilitate school planning in programming for maximizing student
mental health outcomes.
Keywords: Academic press, ecological perspective, protective factors, resilience,
risk, social-emotional functioning.
