The Influence of Positive School Orientation and Teacher Attachment on Adolescent Mental Health Outcomes

Social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions can be delivered universally in schools to help equalize opportunities for diverse students and improve their mental health, as well as other outcomes. However, it is not always known or fully understood which underlying mechanisms may be at play that enable these interventions to achieve their effects –or how such mechanisms may develop over time, within an SEL intervention. The primary purpose of this study was to determine how one such intervention, Positive Action , was able to improve adolescent students’ mental health outcomes, by testing the potential mediational influences of students’ levels of positive school orientation and teacher attachment upon different groups’ outcomes of self-reported depressive and anxiety symptoms. Findings revealed that both constructs played a significant role in students’ outcomes of depressive and anxiety symptoms at the end of their participation in the program.