Schools are well-positioned to work alongside community and healthcare settings to support the mental health needs of every student in Ontario. They are the ideal place for mental health promotion, the prevention of mental health problems, and the early identification of mental health concerns.
When high-quality school mental health service delivery is introduced, scaled, and sustained within and across school districts in a systematic and intentional manner, it has the potential to help every student build and maintain good mental health throughout their lives. Realizing this potential depends on offering supports and services that respond to students’ needs, strengths, cultures and identities.
Video opens with text on screen:
At the centre of Ontario’s school mental health strategy is every student and their unique strengths, identities, needs and natural supports.
A graphic of the strategy unfolds:
The graphic starts with a circle. The very centre says every student.
A ring around the centre circle says commitments to Truth and Reconciliation and equity.
The next ring out has the words dismantle, engage, amplify and respond.
The next ring is broken into equal sections for the multi-tiered system of support. There are five sections for Tier 1, two sections for Tier 2 and one section for Tier 3.
Tier one includes:
Parent, caregiver, and community connections and support
System, school, classroom mental health leadership
Strength-based mental health promotion
Mental health literacy and stigma reduction
Student leadership, participation and agency
Tier 2 includes:
Early identification and student support
Prevention and early intervention
Tier 3 includes:
Intensive supports and service pathways
The outside frame says mentally healthy learning environments, teaching and learning, student engagement and allyship, partnerships and services.
The centre of the circle that says every student then expands to take over the screen and is replaced by a series of diverse student photos, each appearing one at a time.
The circle then changes back to the words every student and shrinks. Text appears:
Differentiated and identity-affirming supports wrap around every student across the tiers of intervention.
But how? The Identity-Affirming School Mental Health Frame offers guidance related to places for reflection and action.
The screen changes to show a graphic with the title The Identity-Affirming School Mental Health Frame.
The graphic is a circle or wheel. The very centre says every student.
A ring around the centre circle says commitments to Truth and Reconciliation, and equity.
The next ring out has the words dismantle, engage, amplify and respond. Each section opens one at a time starting on the bottom left:
Respond with differentiated and Identity affirming mental health supports
Then the top right:
Engage and partner with students, parents/caregivers and community with cultural humility.
Then the bottom right:
Amplify diverse student, parent/caregiver and community perspectives by decentring whiteness
Then the top left:
Dismantle and remove oppression and racism with anti-oppressive and anti-racist policies and practices.
The graphic disappears and words appear:
School mental health done well is grounded in Truth and Reconciliation
School mental health done well is grounded in equity
Those words transition to say:
School mental health done well is identity affirming.
The video ends as the screen becomes a purple, blue and green gradient and the School Mental Health Ontario logo appears in white in the very centre.
Contributions
Who and what contributed to the development of the Identity-Affirming School Mental Health Frame
The concept of the Identity-Affirming School Mental Health Frame was developed in 2021–2022 with guidance from a consultation group comprised of key stakeholders who work in the publicly funded education system in Ontario. Students, educators, and school mental health professionals with varying levels of responsibility and perspectives from across Ontario collaborated and offered guidance to help Ontario school boards reflect and act toward identity-affirming school mental health.
School Mental Health Ontario combined guidance from the field with information from student engagements, board scan data, and other regional mental health leadership consultations to build the Frame. The guidance of the Frame continues to evolve and grow through ongoing engagement and consultation with many people across Ontario.
The Identity-Affirming School Mental Health Frame is theoretically grounded by three frameworks. As the centre of School Mental Health Ontario’s strategic plan, the Frame is supported by Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems Theory. This theory considers the interrelationship among people and structures across multiple levels in school mental health.
In addition, implementation science provides a reference point for the Identity-Affirming School Mental Health Frame’s focus on promoting and supporting systematic uptake in the school board setting.
Lastly, the Identity-Affirming School Mental Health Frame is grounded in anti-oppressive theory, with a focus on eliminating all forms of oppression that are anchored in structural inequities within school mental health.
Glossary
Intersectionality is a term coined by civil rights scholar and writer Kimberlé W. Crenshaw in 1989 to describe the intersection of gender and race. The term is now widely used to describe how various aspects of identity intersect. In Ontario schools, there is growing recognition of the importance of understanding the impact of identity and intersectionality on student mental health. Students with marginalized identities — such as Indigenous, racialized, 2S/LGBTQIA+, having special education needs, or experiencing low income — face additional stressors and challenges that affect their mental health and well-being. Addressing these disproportionalities and disparities in student mental health requires school administrators to commit to courageous leadership and bold action.
Affinity group — An affinity group is an intentionally designated space where everyone in that group shares a particular identity. This identity can be based on race, gender, sexual orientation, language, nationality, physical/mental ability, socio-economic class, family structure, religion, etc. Affinity groups can be a place for underrepresented students or staff to come together to feel less isolated and more connected. Student or staff affinity groups allow participants who share identities — usually marginalized identities — to gather and talk in a supportive space about issues related to that identity and transfer that discussion into action that makes for a more equitable experience at school.
Whiteness refers to the social, political, and cultural system that grants unearned advantages, power, and privilege to those who are aligned with white norms, values, and identities. It functions as a dominant cultural framework that shapes expectations, standards, and definitions of what is considered “normal” or “acceptable” — often in ways that remain invisible to those who benefit from it.
Whiteness is not about individual white people; it is about the structures, practices, and worldviews that centre white experiences while marginalizing or devaluing the identities, cultures, and experiences of others.
Understanding whiteness allows individuals and systems to identify how inequity is embedded in everyday practices and to take intentional steps to dismantle those patterns and create identity-affirming, equitable environments for all students.
Deficit thinking — Deficit thinking is the idea that both the cause and solution of gaps in student achievement, experience, or well-being are the result of individual students, families, or communities. Deficit thinking absolves systems — in this case the education system, but also the child welfare system and more — from taking any responsibility in creating the conditions for Black students to be seen, heard, valued, supported, taught, and believed.
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