Developing an Indigenous Model for Improving School Mental Health with Emphasis on Family–Teacher–Counselor Interaction and School Organizational Culture
Keywords:
School mental health, family–school interaction, school counselor, teacher support, school organizational culture, qualitative research, indigenous modelAbstract
This study aimed to develop an indigenous model for improving school mental health by emphasizing the interaction among families, teachers, school counselors, and the organizational culture of schools in Tehran. This qualitative study employed thematic analysis. Participants consisted of 26 school stakeholders in Tehran selected through purposive maximum-variation sampling, including 8 secondary school students, 6 parents, 5 teachers, 4 school counselors, and 3 school principals or vice-principals. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews and continued until theoretical saturation was reached; initial saturation occurred at the 22nd interview, followed by four additional interviews for confirmatory saturation. Data were analyzed through a six-phase thematic analysis procedure using NVivo software. Trustworthiness was enhanced through member checking, peer debriefing, partial recoding of interviews, analytic memo writing, and maintaining an audit trail. Data analysis resulted in five main categories: “family as a context for emotional co-regulation and care,” “teacher as the frontline agent of psychological identification and support,” “school counselor as the coordinator of screening, brief intervention, and referral,” “healthy, safe, and anti-stigmatizing school organizational culture,” and “participatory governance of school mental health.” The findings indicated that improving students’ mental health requires moving beyond fragmented roles toward an integrated, confidential, preventive, and culturally responsive school-based support system. The proposed indigenous model suggests that school mental health is not merely the result of counseling services but emerges from continuous interaction among families, supportive teacher relationships, access to school counseling, healthy organizational culture, and participatory decision-making mechanisms. Therefore, schools need to move from an individual-centered and reactive approach toward a whole-school, preventive, family-oriented, and culturally grounded model of mental health promotion.
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