Mental health stigma is associated with reduced help-seeking, loss of hope, and negative impacts on self-esteem, and schools have the potential to address both the internalised shame experienced by children, young people, and families, and the public stigma and discrimination they encounter more broadly. Schools occupy a unique position to influence attitudes early, working with students directly while also reaching families and broader school communities through their networks.
Mental Health Stigma Reduction in Primary and Secondary Schools
Overview
This implementation brief from The ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation is part of a five-part series on stigma and its impacts. It explores the role of schools in addressing mental health stigma and the internalised shame experienced by children, young people, and their families. Building on the educational approaches detailed in the "Three Approaches to Stigma Reduction Initiatives" brief, it describes implementation pathways specific to school settings, highlighting the effectiveness of combining mental health education with contact-based approaches involving people with lived experience. The brief provides implementation pathways across system, school community, parent and carer, and student levels to support stigma reduction in primary and secondary schools.
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Key insights
This implementation brief, part of a five-part series on stigma and its impacts, examines the role schools can play in reducing mental health stigma among children, young people, and their families. It builds on the educational approaches outlined in the "Three Approaches to Stigma Reduction Initiatives" brief, highlighting evidence that combining mental health education with contact-based approaches — particularly exposure to lived experience stories — is most effective in schools. The brief emphasises that effective implementation requires preparing the whole school community, including teachers, parents and carers, and students, and accounting for social and cultural contexts, while noting that implementation pathways to scalability in schools require further development.
School programs that combine mental health education with direct contact with people who have lived experience have been found to be most effective in combating stigma, promoting empathy and understanding, and improving mental health understanding among students. Incorporating lived experience creates a more supportive social climate and has been found to encourage help-seeking behaviours in students. This builds on the contact-based and educational approaches detailed in the "Three Approaches to Stigma Reduction Initiatives" brief, applying them specifically to the school context.
People with lived experience of mental ill-health, and carer, family, and kinship group members, consistently identify schools as playing an important role in reducing stigma and supporting young people's mental health. Priorities shared by people with lived experience include increasing mental health literacy and knowledge in school students, taught using lived experience, and better equipping schools to deal with mental health issues. These priorities reflect a desire for young people to feel less alone and for stigma associated with mental health challenges to be reduced.
Reducing the impact of mental health stigma on students requires preparing the whole school community — including teachers and staff, parents and carers, and students themselves — and accounting for social and cultural contexts. The brief notes that much of the preparedness and delivery responsibility rests with teachers and staff, and that providing education to both school staff and families before delivering school-based anti-stigma education is likely to strengthen the environment for students. While models exist for storytelling as a contact-based intervention and for education and awareness campaigns, implementation pathways to scalability specifically within schools require further development.
Practical implementation pathways are identified across system, teacher and school community, parent and carer, and student levels to support stigma reduction in schools. At the system level, recommendations include State and Territory Departments of Education collating evidence-informed, culturally responsive stigma reduction resources and developing school-specific implementation guidelines, drawing on existing resources such as Victoria's Mental Health Menu and ACT-based programs. At the teacher and school community level, recommendations include training in discussing mental health, supporting individual students (e.g., the Berry Street Education Model), and improving the whole-school environment to be psychologically safe and trauma-informed (e.g., Be You resources). For parents and carers, recommendations include promoting attendance at aligned information sessions and supporting access to trusted online resources such as Reachout. For students, recommendations include involving them in implementation planning and feedback, providing in-person education with accessible online follow-up materials, and contact-based interventions such as Batyr@school, which includes a focus on recovery and story-sharing for students in years 9–12.
Did this resource draw on transformative evidence?
Yes — The brief includes a dedicated "Lived-Experience Perspectives on Stigma Reduction in Schools" section, drawing on two direct quotes from people with lived experience sourced from the ALIVE National Centre Priorities Database, regarding mental health literacy and equipping schools to respond to mental health issues.
Yes — The pathways to implementation table draws on practice-level knowledge of existing school-based programs and resources, including the Berry Street Education Model, Be You resources, Reachout, Batyr@school, and state-based resources such as Victoria's Mental Health Menu and ACT mental health workshop resources.
Yes — The brief references five sources including a systematic review of school-based interventions to improve mental health literacy and reduce stigma (Ma, Anderson & Burn, 2023), Australian youth perspectives on mental health literacy in schools (Marinucci, Grové & Rozendorn, 2022), student perspectives on improving school environments (Rosvall, 2019), evidence on effective stigma reduction interventions (Thornicroft et al., 2016), and the scalability assessment review (Charif et al., 2022).
How can this resource help me as a...?
Teachers and school staff are a primary audience, with specific training recommendations covering how to discuss mental health, support individual students, and create psychologically safe, trauma-informed environments.
State and Territory Departments of Education are directly addressed regarding their responsibility to collate resources and develop school-specific implementation guidelines.
Parents and carers are explicitly identified as an audience for anti-stigma programs aligned with school-based interventions, with recommendations to support their access to trusted resources.
People with lived experience of mental ill-health are central to the contact-based approaches discussed, and the brief draws directly on their priorities for school-based stigma reduction.
The brief's emphasis on lived experience storytelling and contact-based interventions in schools (e.g., Batyr@school) makes this relevant to those working in lived experience-led school programs.
The brief notes that implementation pathways to scalability in schools require further development, identifying a clear area for future research.