Teachers’ Social Representations of School Mental Health in Brazil: A Participatory Intervention

Schools are more than places where children learn math and history; they are the primary communities where young people spend their days, making them critical ground zero for understanding and supporting mental well-being. For decades, educators have been expected to notice when a student is struggling, to offer a listening ear, and to know when to call for professional help. This role requires a specific kind of knowledge, often called mental health literacy, which involves recognizing signs of distress and knowing how to respond. However, simply teaching teachers facts about anxiety or depression often misses a deeper layer: the shared, unspoken beliefs they hold about what mental health actually means in their daily lives. These shared beliefs act like a lens, shaping how a teacher interprets a child's behavior, decides whether to intervene, and understands their own role in the process. If a teacher views mental health solely as a medical problem to be fixed, they may feel ill-equipped. If they see it as a collective responsibility of the community, their approach changes entirely. Understanding these invisible frameworks is essential, because they determine whether a school becomes a place of genuine support or a site of confusion and overload.

In a coastal municipality in Brazil called Galinhos, a team of researchers set out to see if they could shift these shared beliefs through a new kind of training. They worked with fifty-two teachers from the local public school system, a community characterized by strong family ties but limited access to specialized mental health services. The researchers were interested in the "social representations" of mental health, a concept that refers to the common pool of ideas, images, and words a group uses to make sense of a complex topic. To measure these representations, the team used a simple but powerful tool called a free word association task. Before any training began, the teachers were asked to write down the first words or short phrases that came to mind when they heard the phrase "school mental health." The researchers then analyzed these lists to find the most common words and the order in which they appeared, which reveals the core of what the group believes.

The results before the training showed a clear pattern. The teachers' shared understanding was built around two central ideas: "welcoming" and "well-being." These were the first and most frequent words they offered. This suggested that, initially, the teachers viewed mental health through an emotional and relational lens, seeing the school as a space that should be safe, caring, and supportive. While they also mentioned difficult realities like anxiety and stress, their core definition was positive and focused on the quality of relationships. It was a view that valued care but perhaps lacked a structured framework for how to enact it when things got difficult.

Over the course of four months, the teachers participated in a participatory training program. Unlike traditional lectures where experts simply transmit information, this process involved fifteen workshops and discussion circles where teachers worked together. They shared their own stories, discussed real-life scenarios from their classrooms, and explored topics like self-care, how to listen without taking on a student's trauma, and the boundaries of their professional roles. The training was designed to be a dialogue, allowing the teachers to build new meanings together rather than just receiving a set of rules.

When the researchers asked the teachers to perform the same word association task after the training, the landscape of their thinking had shifted. The word "welcoming" was still present, but it was no longer the single, dominant center of their understanding. Instead, a new word had taken the central spot: "respect." This single change suggests a significant reorganization of how the group views mental health. "Respect" implies a more active, ethical, and mutual relationship. It moves the concept from a general feeling of care to a specific principle of how people treat one another. The words "welcoming," "well-being," and "empathy" did not disappear; they moved to the outer edges of the group's thinking, becoming the practical ways they express that central value of respect.

Furthermore, the teachers began to use a wider range of words that reflected the complexities of their daily work. New terms appeared in their lists, such as "dialogue," "listening," "coexistence," "equity," and "partnership." Crucially, they also began to name the structural challenges they face, with words like "overload" and "safety" entering the conversation. This indicates that the training helped them articulate not just the ideal of mental health, but the real conditions required to achieve it. They were no longer just talking about feelings; they were talking about the systems, relationships, and boundaries that make care possible.

The study suggests that when teachers are given the space to discuss their experiences and co-create knowledge, their shared understanding of mental health can evolve from a vague sense of caring to a more concrete, ethical framework grounded in respect and collective responsibility. The researchers found that this shift was not just about learning new facts, but about changing the very language and symbols they use to interpret their work. While the study does not claim to have solved the problem of teacher burnout or the lack of resources in schools, it demonstrates that participatory training can alter the symbolic foundations of how educators approach mental health. By moving the central focus to respect, the teachers may be better positioned to navigate the difficult balance between supporting students and protecting their own well-being, viewing mental health not as a solitary burden but as a shared condition of the school community.