The role of counseling service in primary schools for children with mental health disorders

This paper explores the role of counselling service in primary schools for children with mental health disorders. In the theoretical part, it begins with definitions of some key concepts, such as mental health, the continuum of mental health and negative mental health. Since definition of negative mental health differs from other concepts because of its indefinable character, it is explored from medical and social pedagogical perspective. In the next section, focus is on mental health disorders and presents fundamental theoretical concepts of an integrated model of understanding mental health disorders. Furthermore it presents the role of the family in the development of mental health of children and adolescents as well as family as a source of distress and trauma that negatively impact on children's mental health. The next section sets mental health disorders in a school environment, whereby it shows school as a safety and as a risk factor. Lastly, it describes the school counselling service in elementary school, its role in protecting the mental health of pupils and the support for children with mental distress. It also highlights some basic social pedagogical concepts that the school counselling service can use in dealing with children with mental distress. As a part of the theoretical work, I present the findings of some already existing Slovenian and foreign researches related to the subject matter. The empirical part of this paper is based on a qualitative research approach. On a selected sample of ten people including five school counsellors and five teachers, the role of school counselling service in relation to the children with mental distress was explored. The results of this research are showing, that the school counselling service plays a very important role for the children with mental distress. They do not only recognize them, but also support them by using different methods, strategies and approaches. Furthermore they involve parents, teachers, school management and experts from various external institutions in the process. It turned out that it is significant the teachers work collaboratively with the school counselling service and that the effectiveness of helping children with mental health disorders depends to a large extent on cooperation with their parents