Screening Student Resiliency and Mental Health Indicators During School Re-Entry

COVID-19 displaced millions of students from their schools, teachers, and peer groups. Early data proclaimed everything from a second "mental health pandemic" wave to significant expressions of strength and resilience. The primary research question is: What are the self-reported mental health needs and resiliency indicators of students returning to school amidst COVID-19? This information is urgently needed by schools to ensure effective, appropriate, and time sensitive mental health supports are available to returning learners in their metropolitan schools (Catholic and public) in two major Canadian cities. This study will measure behavioural and mental health functioning and resilience in a large sample (N approx. 3000) of metropolitan school district students at the time of school re-entry and again at 3, 6, and 9 months post school re-entry. Students will complete measures of COVID-19 health behaviours, mental health symptoms and adaptive behaviours, and resiliency. Results will inform strategic planning related to student services for these school districts and assist in the development of system-wide intervention and resource allocation for students returning to school in Fall, 2020. Knowledge translation activities will include dissemination of results to the metro school districts via reports, data webinars, infographics, social media platforms, and peer-reviewed publications. In summary, the present study will assist four major metro school districts to gather screening data useful for prioritizing district-wide initiatives that can inform strategies to build on identified strengths and remediate self-reported learning, behavioural, and social-emotional needs of students upon school re-entry.