When Belonging Becomes Part of the Treatment

What School Connectedness Can Teach Us About Mental Health and Behaviour

Dr. Bob Carey

Over the years, one of the things I have learned from working with children and adolescents who experience significant behavioural and mental health difficulties is that it is very easy to become focused on the behaviour itself. When a student is refusing school, becoming increasingly anxious, withdrawing from others, disrupting the classroom, or simply appearing to have lost interest in things that once mattered to them, our natural response is to try to understand what is going on inside that young person. We look at symptoms, developmental history, learning difficulties, family circumstances and diagnoses, and we try to determine what intervention might help. This is, of course, an important part of understanding any child. However, I have also found that some of the most useful information can come from stepping back and looking at the environment in which the behaviour is occurring.

This is one of the reasons I have always been interested in the idea of a Positive Systems Approach. It begins with the recognition that people do not exist independently of the systems around them. A child is simultaneously a member of a family, a classroom, a school, a peer group and a community, and what happens within those systems inevitably influences the child's experience. The behaviour we see is therefore not simply a characteristic of the child; it is also a response to a particular set of circumstances, relationships, expectations and experiences.

Recent research into school connectedness provides an interesting reminder of just how important this broader perspective may be.  A new longitudinal study published in September 2026 involved 1,548 Year 8 adolescents, with an average age of 13.9 years, attending 35 schools in Australia. The researchers examined school-, staff- and student-level factors and looked at their relationships with both psychological distress and wellbeing. Rather than simply taking a snapshot of students' experiences at one point in time, they followed the young people over a two-year period. The finding that particularly caught my attention was that, although several aspects of school climate and connectedness were associated with wellbeing and psychological distress at the initial assessment, student-rated school connectedness was the only factor examined that was associated with higher wellbeing two years later. The researchers appropriately emphasize that this is a longitudinal association rather than proof that connectedness itself causes better wellbeing, but the finding is nevertheless important. It suggests that the way a young person experiences their relationship with school may be an important part of the environment in which wellbeing develops over time.  There is something about this finding that feels particularly important when we think about children who are struggling.

We often talk about school as though it were simply the setting in which a child's difficulties happen. A student has anxiety, for example, and the anxiety happens to show itself at school. A child has ADHD, and the symptoms become apparent in the classroom. A student has a learning disability and struggles with academic work. A young person is depressed and begins missing classes. In this way of thinking, the difficulty belongs primarily to the child, while the school is simply the place where we happen to observe it.  But children do not experience school in such a detached way. School is a significant part of their social and emotional world. It is where they spend much of their day, where they encounter success and failure, where they develop relationships with adults and peers, and where they begin to form ideas about who they are and whether they are capable of being successful in the world around them.

This broader understanding of school connectedness is supported by a substantial body of research. A 2025 review of 90 empirical studies found that school connectedness is best understood as a multidimensional construct involving school attachment and belonging, relationships with teachers, and relationships with peers. The review found that connectedness is associated with both positive adjustment and a range of psychological outcomes, including mental health, wellbeing, resilience and self-esteem.  For some children, this sense of connection develops almost without conscious thought. They have friends who expect them to be there. A teacher knows something about them beyond their grades. Someone notices when they are absent. They have an activity in which they feel competent. They have a place where they experience themselves as successful. These experiences accumulate, and over time they contribute to a feeling that school is somewhere they belong.  For other students, the experience can be very different. A child who struggles academically may spend years being reminded of their failures. A student with social difficulties may find that interactions with peers are unpredictable or painful. A young person with autism may be expected to navigate a social and sensory environment that is poorly matched to the way they experience the world. A student with anxiety may gradually withdraw from situations that feel threatening, while a child who has experienced repeated behavioural difficulties may come to expect that interactions with adults will usually involve correction or consequences.

None of these experiences necessarily means that a school is deliberately excluding the student. In fact, many of the adults involved may be working extremely hard to help. The difficulty is that systems can produce unintended effects. A teacher may repeatedly correct a student because the behaviour needs to be addressed. A school may remove a student from class because the behaviour is disrupting other students. A parent may apply increasing pressure because attendance is becoming a concern. Each response may make sense when viewed on its own, yet the combined effect may be that the young person gradually experiences themselves as someone who is always in trouble, always behind, or somehow different from everyone else.  At some point, the question changes from whether the student is behaving appropriately to whether the student still feels that they are part of the community.

This is where the idea of school connectedness becomes particularly relevant to a Positive Systems Approach. One of the central principles of a systems perspective is that behaviour needs to be understood in relation to the circumstances in which it occurs. We are interested not only in what the individual does, but also in what happens before the behaviour, what follows it, what relationships are involved, what expectations are being placed on the individual, and what the individual may be gaining or avoiding through the behaviour.  Consider, for example, a student who begins refusing to complete reading assignments. It might be tempting to describe the student as unmotivated or oppositional, particularly if repeated reminders and encouragement have not worked. But suppose the student has significant reading difficulties and has experienced years of embarrassment when asked to read in front of others. The assignment arrives, the student anticipates failure, anxiety increases, and the student refuses. The teacher responds by applying more pressure, the student becomes increasingly distressed, and eventually the student is removed from the classroom. From the student's perspective, the refusal has succeeded in removing an experience that felt threatening.  The behaviour may therefore continue (in applied behaviour analysis, this is referred to as "negative reinforcement.")

If our only response is to try to eliminate the refusal, we may miss an important part of the problem. The more useful question might be what could be changed before the refusal occurs. Could the academic demand be modified? Could assistive technology reduce the student's sense of failure? Could the task be presented differently? Could the student experience some success before being asked to tackle something difficult? Could the relationship with the teacher become a source of reassurance rather than another source of pressure?  None of these changes requires us to excuse the student's behaviour or abandon expectations. They simply recognize that changing the conditions surrounding the behaviour may sometimes be more productive than repeatedly trying to change the behaviour itself.

This is an important distinction within a Positive Systems Approach. The goal is not to blame the school, the teacher, the parents or the child. Rather, it is to understand how the different parts of the system are interacting and to look for places where a relatively small change might alter the pattern that has developed.

There is also an important second study that helps us understand why the relationship between a young person and their school should not be viewed as one-directional. In research involving 25,506 English adolescents between the ages of 12 and 15, researchers followed students across three annual waves of data and examined within-person changes in internalizing symptoms, school belonging, relationships with staff and attendance. They found that increases in internalizing symptoms predicted later reductions in school belonging for both sexes. There were also sex-specific pathways in the other direction: improved relationships with staff predicted reductions in internalizing symptoms for boys, while increased school belonging predicted reductions in internalizing symptoms for girls. Most of the pathways examined, however, operated similarly across sexes.  The importance of this study is not that it gives us a simple formula for improving mental health. Rather, it suggests that the relationship between a young person's mental health and their experience of school is dynamic and potentially reciprocal. Emotional difficulties can make it harder for a young person to feel connected to school, while positive experiences within the school environment may, in some circumstances, be associated with improvements in emotional wellbeing.  This is very consistent with the way we think about systems.

A young person who is anxious may find school increasingly difficult. They may withdraw from peers, avoid participating in class and begin missing school. Those experiences can reduce their opportunities for connection and make school feel even less comfortable. As their sense of belonging diminishes, their anxiety may become more difficult to manage. What began as an internal emotional difficulty has now become part of a larger system of interactions involving the student, their peers, teachers, family and school.  The reverse can also occur. A student who has been struggling may develop a relationship with a teacher who takes the time to understand them. Perhaps that teacher discovers an interest or ability that other adults have overlooked. Perhaps the student begins to experience some success. They become a little more willing to participate, which creates more opportunities for positive interactions. Gradually, school begins to feel somewhat different.  Nothing miraculous has necessarily happened. The student's underlying difficulties may still be there. What has changed is the relationship between the student and the environment.

This is one of the reasons that systems thinking can be so useful when working with challenging behaviour. Systems are dynamic. The behaviour of one part of a system influences the other parts, which then influence the individual again. Over time, these interactions can create patterns that either make difficulties increasingly entrenched or create opportunities for positive change.  A student who repeatedly experiences failure may begin to avoid academic tasks. Avoidance leads to missed learning opportunities, which creates further academic difficulty, which produces more avoidance. Similarly, a student who experiences social rejection may withdraw from peers, which reduces opportunities to develop friendships, which can make future social interactions even more difficult.  But systems can also develop positive patterns. A student who experiences success may become more willing to participate. Participation creates additional opportunities for positive feedback, which increases confidence and makes further participation more likely. A student who develops a trusting relationship with an adult may feel safer asking for help, which can prevent a relatively small difficulty from becoming a much larger problem.

This is why I think the concept of connectedness deserves to be taken seriously as more than simply a desirable feature of a healthy school environment. The accumulating research suggests that a young person's sense of belonging may be an important part of the environment in which healthy development and wellbeing are supported. A recent systematic review of school connectedness interventions in secondary schools, for example, identified 16 trials involving more than 35,000 participants and examined interventions designed to improve connectedness, belonging or engagement. The authors noted the links between these constructs and academic, social and emotional outcomes, while also emphasizing the need for stronger evidence about which interventions are most effective.

There is another aspect of this that I believe is particularly important. We sometimes approach intervention as though the child is the only part of the system that can change. When a student is struggling, we assess the student, provide counselling, teach coping skills, develop behaviour plans and work on emotional regulation. All of these interventions can be valuable. However, if the environment in which the student is struggling remains unchanged, we may inadvertently be teaching the child how to cope with an environment that continues to create the difficulty.  Sometimes the more productive intervention is to look outward.  Perhaps the classroom needs to become more predictable. Perhaps expectations need to be adjusted. Perhaps the student needs more opportunities to experience competence. Perhaps there needs to be a particular adult in the school who takes responsibility for maintaining a consistent relationship with that student. Perhaps a peer connection needs to be facilitated. Perhaps the way adults respond to challenging behaviour needs to change so that correction does not become the dominant form of interaction.  These changes can appear relatively small, but their cumulative effect can be significant.

One of the ideas that has been particularly important in the Positive Systems Approach is the belief that prevention often begins before there is a behaviour to manage. If we can create an environment in which a person feels understood, supported, competent and connected, we may reduce the circumstances that make challenging behaviour more likely in the first place.  This is also why I have always felt that strengths are so important. A child should not become defined by the things that are difficult for them.

A student may have significant learning difficulties and still be an excellent problem solver. A young person with ADHD may struggle to remain attentive during conventional classroom instruction but demonstrate remarkable creativity and energy when working on something meaningful to them. A child with autism may find many social situations difficult while possessing exceptional knowledge or abilities in particular areas. A student experiencing anxiety may nevertheless be thoughtful, compassionate and deeply concerned about other people. These strengths are not simply pleasant observations to place at the end of an assessment report. They can become the means through which a student begins to experience competence and connection. They provide adults with something around which to build a relationship, and they provide the student with opportunities to see themselves as capable rather than continually being reminded of their difficulties.  In that sense, strengths and belonging are closely related.  It is difficult to feel that you belong somewhere if your primary experience of that environment is failure. It is easier to develop a sense of belonging when there are places within that environment where you feel that you have something to contribute.

This brings us back to the original question about where we choose to look when a child is struggling.  If we focus exclusively on the behaviour, we may conclude that the child needs to change. If we broaden our view, we may discover that there are things happening around the child that are maintaining the difficulty. The important point is not to choose one explanation over the other. A Positive Systems Approach asks us to consider both.  A child may have ADHD, autism, anxiety, depression, a learning disability or a history of trauma, and those individual characteristics may require direct intervention. At the same time, the child's experience of those difficulties will be shaped by the relationships and environments in which they live.  The diagnosis does not tell us what happens next.  We need to remember that the environment matters.  For instance, a student with anxiety can experience school as a place of constant threat, or as a place where supportive relationships and successful experiences gradually help them develop confidence. A student with autism can experience school as a continual series of confusing demands and corrections, or as an environment that recognizes differences, builds on strengths and provides appropriate accommodations. A student with a learning disability can spend years experiencing failure or can discover areas of competence that change the way they think about themselves.  The underlying characteristics of the student may be essentially the same.  What changes is the relationship between the student and the system.

That may be one of the most important implications of the recent research on school connectedness. We often think about mental health interventions as something that happens to an individual, usually through counselling, therapy, medication or skill development. Those interventions remain important, but perhaps we also need to think more seriously about the environments in which children spend their lives.

For a young person, school is not simply a place where education occurs. It is one of the principal social environments in which they develop an understanding of themselves. It is where they learn whether they are competent, whether other people can be trusted, whether mistakes are survivable, whether adults will support them when things go wrong, and whether they have a meaningful place within a larger community.  Those experiences accumulate. For some children, they create a growing sense of confidence and belonging. For others, they gradually reinforce the feeling that they are different, unsuccessful or somehow on the outside. Perhaps this is why the idea of belonging deserves to be considered as part of mental health rather than simply as an aspect of school culture.  A student who feels that they belong may still experience anxiety, frustration, learning difficulties or challenging behaviour. Belonging is not a cure for mental illness. It does not eliminate the need for professional intervention, nor does it mean that difficult behaviour should simply be accepted. What it can provide, however, is a relational context in which those difficulties are addressed.

There is a profound difference between telling a student, explicitly or implicitly, that they will be fully accepted once they learn to behave appropriately and communicating that they remain a valued member of the community while everyone works together to address the behaviour.  The second approach does not mean lowering expectations. It means separating the person's worth and place within the community from the behaviour that needs to change.  That distinction is at the heart of a positive approach.  Perhaps, then, one of the questions we should be asking when a child begins to struggle is not simply, "How do we change this behaviour?" but, "What can we change around this child that might make positive behaviour and participation easier?"  That question can lead us in very different directions.  It might lead us toward better academic support, a stronger relationship with a teacher, more opportunities for success, changes to classroom expectations, more predictable routines, greater attention to sensory or environmental needs, or simply ensuring that there is an adult in the school who knows the student well enough to notice when something has changed.  It may also lead us to look at our own responses. When a student behaves in a difficult way, are our interactions with that student becoming almost entirely corrective? Are they increasingly being removed from the classroom? Are they participating less in the activities that other students enjoy? Are we unintentionally creating a situation in which the student hears their name primarily when something has gone wrong?  These are difficult questions, but they are worthwhile ones.  A system can unintentionally teach disconnection just as easily as it can foster belonging.  The hopeful part is that systems can also change.

We may not be able to change a child's developmental history, temperament or biological vulnerability. We may not be able to eliminate their anxiety or learning difficulties. But we can often change something about the environment in which that child is being asked to manage those difficulties.  For instance, we can change relationships, we can create opportunities for competence, we can recognize strengths, we can alter expectations, we can change the way we respond to behaviour. And we can create environments in which a young person has a genuine opportunity to experience themselves as a valued member of the community.

That, ultimately, is what I find so interesting about the emerging research on school connectedness. It is not suggesting that schools can solve every mental health problem, nor that belonging is more important than professional treatment. Rather, it is reminding us of something that a Positive Systems Approach has emphasized for many years: the individual and the environment cannot be separated when we are trying to understand behaviour and wellbeing. 

When a young person is struggling, it is important to look at the child.  But it is equally important to look around the child. What relationships are there? What opportunities are there? What expectations are being placed on them? Where do they experience success? What happens when they struggle? And perhaps most importantly, do they have a sense that they belong?  The answer to that last question may tell us more than we realize.

Perhaps the goal should not simply be to help children learn how to fit into the systems around them. Perhaps our responsibility is also to create systems that are flexible enough, supportive enough and responsive enough to allow different kinds of children to find a meaningful place within them.  When we do that, we are not simply managing behaviour. We are creating the conditions in which positive behaviour, learning, relationships and wellbeing have a better opportunity to develop. And perhaps that is one of the most useful ways of thinking about a Positive Systems Approach: rather than waiting for behaviour to become a problem and then trying to change the person displaying it, we look carefully at the system around that person and ask what we can do to create a different experience.

Sometimes the most meaningful change begins there—not with changing the child, but with changing what the child experiences around them.

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References and Further Reading

Stevens, S. K., Maston, K., Beames, J. R., O'Dea, B., Torok, M., Calear, A. L., Christensen, H., Batterham, P. J., & Werner-Seidler, A. (2026). Longitudinal associations between school-, staff-, and student-level factors with student psychological distress and wellbeing. npj Mental Health Research. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44184-026-00244-z.

Cheng, Q., Thornton, E., Knowles, C., & Humphrey, N. (2026). Adolescent internalizing symptoms, school experiences, and attendance: Sex-specific within-person pathways. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2026.04.001.

Peng, A., & Patterson, M. M. (2025). A review of school connectedness: Definitions, antecedents, and psychological outcomes. Journal of School Health, 95(9), 741–764. https://doi.org/10.1111/josh.70037.

Gilbertson, J. M., et al. (2026). A systematic review of school connectedness in middle school students. Psychology in the Schools. https://doi.org/10.1002/pits.70173.

Interventions to Improve Connectedness, Belonging, and Engagement in Secondary Schools: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. (2025). Education Sciences, 15(5), 582. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci15050582.