Schools and children's mental health

There has been a lot of research about the effect of the workplace on adults' mental health but much less research on the effect of children's workplaces i.e. schools. Researchers from the University of Maryland studied 10,700 Year One pupils whose parents and teachers were interviewed. The authors looked at four different areas to assess their children's mental health: learning, behaviour, relationships and emotions. They found that children in classrooms which lacked material resources - such as paper, pencils, child-friendly furniture, computers and musical instruments - and children whose teachers felt their colleagues did not respect them had more problems in all of these areas.