EFFECTIVENESS OF SCHOOL ANTI-BULLYING AND MENTAL HEALTH PROMOTION PROGRAMMES ON STUDENTS’ MENTAL HEALTH: A CRITICAL REVIEW

Abstract

School anti-bullying programmes and school mental health promotion are often treated as parts of the same preventive agenda, yet they do not always produce the same kinds of student outcomes. This critical review examines whether school anti-bullying and mental health promotion programmes improve students’ mental health, with attention to anxiety, depression, internalising symptoms, self-esteem, subjective wellbeing, school belonging and psychological safety. It draws on fifteen recent peer-reviewed reviews, meta-analyses, umbrella reviews and intervention studies published mainly between 2022 and 2026, while using two earlier meta-analytic sources to locate current evidence within the established anti-bullying evidence base. The evidence presents a useful tension. Anti-bullying programmes show consistent but modest reductions in bullying victimisation and perpetration, while effects on mental health outcomes are usually smaller and less stable. Mental health promotion programmes, especially those using cognitive-behavioural, social and emotional learning, mental health literacy or structured wellbeing components, appear more psychologically direct, but they can underplay the peer ecology in which bullying harms are produced. Whole-school approaches are theoretically stronger because they address norms, teacher responses, bystander behaviour and school climate, yet their impact often weakens when implementation is superficial or poorly monitored. The most convincing position is that student mental health improves best when bullying prevention and mental health promotion are not run as separate agendas. Schools need layered programmes that combine universal culture change, targeted support for victimised students, bystander and peer-norm work, teacher training and direct measurement of mental health outcomes over time.