Teacher Perspectives on Their Role and the Challenges of Inter-professional Collaboration in Mental Health Promotion

This paper explores the teacher role in inter-professional collaboration in mental health promotion and identifies teachers’ perceived challenges to collaborative work in this field. Data are derived from a mixed method design, with three focus group interviews (n = 15) and survey research (n = 771) conducted with Norwegian K-12 teachers. The findings show that teachers perceive their gatekeeping role to be prominent, in that they are front line professionals to identify students’ mental health problems and, if necessary, make referrals to mental health services. However, teachers realize that mental health promotion encompasses more than the assessment of difficulties, and they call for more support and information through inter-professional collaboration in order to extend their engagement in student mental health beyond the gatekeeping role. Based on this, six main challenges to inter-professional collaboration are identified. These are the challenges of: (1) communication and confidentiality, (2) time constraints, (3) contextual presence and understanding, (4) cross-systems contact, (5) school leadership and (6) teacher competence in mental health.