30.5 percent of school principals report that their district mandated school screening; rates of screening higher in larger schools
By Elana Gotkine HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, July 24, 2025 (HealthDay News) — Few school principals report district-mandated mental health screening in schools, according to a study published online July 18 in JAMA Network Open.
Jonathan Cantor, Ph.D., from RAND in Santa Monica, California, and colleagues estimated the frequency of and response to school screening and perceptions of school leaders on the ease of connecting youth with mental health care. School-level data from the National Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data were linked to October 2024 survey responses to the American School Leader Panel of principals.
The researchers found that 30.5 percent of the 1,019 responding school principals reported that their district mandated schools screen students for mental health problems. If a student was was identified as having anxiety or depression, most principals reported that their school typically notified the student’s parents, offered in-person treatment, and referred the student to a community mental health care professional (weighted percentages, 79.3, 72.3, and 53.0 percent, respectively). Overall, 40.9 and 38.1 percent of principals reported that ensuring student receipt of appropriate care was very or somewhat hard and was very or somewhat easy, respectively. The rates of screening were higher in school sizes of 450 or more students and in districts with mostly racial and ethnic minority groups as the student population (odds ratios, 1.32 and 1.48, respectively).
“Policies that promote federal and state funding for school mental health services, reimbursement for school-based mental health screening, and adequate school mental health staffing ratios may increase screening rates and successful connection to care,” the authors write.
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