Exploring Elementary Educators’ Mental Health Literacy and Decision-making Using a Mixed Method Approach and Attribution Theory
Year: 2021
Type: dissertation
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: This study explored a group of Canadian elementary educators’ and their mental health literacy (recognition, help-seeking, attitudes), their social-emotional learning beliefs (comfort, commitment, culture), and their causal attributions and cognitive and affective responses to externalizing and internalizing mental health challenges, to understand decision-making. A mixed method design with two consecutive phases, quantitative (online survey) and qualitative (vignette think-aloud task, semi-structured interview), allowed for an exploration of educators with high and low mental health literacy levels, using descriptive, inferential, and constant comparison analyses. It was found that educators possessed mixed levels of recognition accuracy, and that these were relatively higher than educators’ help-seeking confidence across both phases. In particular, externalizing (i.e., ODD) and internalizing (i.e., OCD) disorders were more recognizable, over specific internalizing ones (i.e., social phobia, depression). High mental health literacy educators expressed higher knowledge of help-seeking strategies, employed tiered-based interventions, and demonstrated higher confidence and self-efficacy in comparison to low mental health literacy educators. Further, educators’ sense of comfort in implementing these was positively associated with their mental health literacy scores. In turn, educators’ personal experience with someone with mental health problems or disorders was found to be correlated with their comfort in implementing social-emotional learning programs. Educators showed that they had sympathetic attitudes towards children with mental health challenges, but they also recollected more incidents that were characterized by student aggression directed both towards students, and towards teachers, themselves. In terms of causal attributions, educators attributed internalizing challenges towards children; in contrast, they attributed externalizing challenges to families. Finally, educators also showed more cognitive and emotional responsiveness towards externalizing behaviours but were more concerned about internalizing challenges. Together, these findings are interpreted to mean that there is an implicit level of bias within educators’ emotions and decision-making about children with mental health challenges. Implications from these findings include increasing support for educators’ mental health literacy in terms of recognition of internalizing challenges, help-seeking knowledge, and providing opportunities for the exploration of emotions and reactions during interactions with children with mental health challenges, especially externalizing ones.
Author: Glenda Christou
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3210522644