Mental health difficulties, attainment and attendance: A cross-sectional study.
Open accessAbstract
Evidence for the association between mental health difficulties and academic outcomes is sparse and shows mixed results. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between educational attainment, absenteeism and mental health difficulties while controlling for various child characteristics such as special educational needs and socioeconomic background. 15,301 Year 7 pupils (mean age 11.91; SD = 0.28) from England completed the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Attainment, persistent absenteeism and child characteristics were derived from the National Pupil Database. Multilevel regression analysis showed that mental health difficulties were negatively associated with attainment and positively associated with persistent absenteeism. When all mental health difficulties were modelled simultaneously, behavioural difficulties, hyperactivity/attention difficulties and difficulties with peers were negatively associated with attainment. Emotional difficulties and hyperactivity/attention difficulties were positively associated with persistent absenteeism. The results of the current study highlight the importance of integration between mental health support and policy creation in relation to mental health difficulties and wellbeing in schools.
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Professionals' discourse reveals underlying pedagogical knowledge of the association between mental health and school attendance, as widely established in literature.
“their discourse reveals underlying pedagogical knowledge of the association between mental health and school attendance, as widely established in literature (e.g., Finning et al., 2019;Lereya et al., 2019).”
From Their voices matter: student and professional perspectives on overcoming school attendance problems in the context of social, emotional, and behavioral difficulties (2025) · cites this paper as Lereya et al., 2019
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Enderle, C., Kotschy, L., Ricking, H., & Kreitz-Sandberg, S. (2025) · Frontiers in Education · doi:10.3389/feduc.2025.1627098 · Cited by 5 · see citing works
- Authors
- Lereya, S. T., Patel, M., dos Santos, J. P. G. A., & Deighton, J.
- Affiliations
- Anna Freud Centre (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Lereya, Suzet Tanya
- Venue
- European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
- Published
- 2019-01-09
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 8
- Pages
- 1147-1152
- ISSN
- 1018-8827 (ISSN-L)
- 1435-165X
- OpenAlex
- W2909884111
- Cited by
- 39
- References
- 3
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 7 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 9 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 7
- FWCI
- 3.89
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- discovery.ucl.ac.uk
- Licence
- www.springer.com/tdm (tdm)
- Locations
- European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Research Explorer (The University of Manchester) (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Big Lottery Fund
- NIHR
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
- Social Sciences › Education › Youth Substance Use and School Attendance
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Speech and Hearing › School Health and Nursing Education
- Keywords
- academic performance, school absenteeism, behavioral problems, peer problems, emotional problems, special educational needs, socioeconomic background, school well-being, elementary school students
- MeSH terms
- Absenteeism, Child, Cross-Sectional Studies, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Health
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