
“School spirit” appears to provide long-lasting mental health benefits for Black teens, new research finds. School connectedness – the degree to which students feel like part of to their school community – is a protective factor against depression and aggressive behavior later in life among Black students, researchers report in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence. “Our data provide fairly strong evidence for the idea that the experiences Black adolescents have in their school impacts their long-term mental health,” lead researcher Adrian Gale, an assistant professor in the Rutgers University School of Social Work, said in a news release. Lots of research has been conducted on the benefits of school connectedness for well-being and physical health, but most studies have focused on white teenagers, researchers said. To take a closer look at Black students, researchers analyzed data from an ongoing study following nearly 5,000 children born in large U.S. cities between 1998 and 2000. Of those kids, nearly 1,700 were Black children interviewed at ages 9 and 15, researchers said. The kids’ caregivers also were interviewed at the 15-year follow-up. The children were asked at age 9 to rate how often they felt “part of your school, close to people at your school, happy to be at your school, and safe at school.” Six years later, the kids’ caregivers were asked whether their children often… read on > read on >