Cattan Sarah, Lereya Suzet Tanya, Yoon Yeosun, Gilbert Ruth, Deighton Jessica
Institute for Fiscal Studies and IZA, United Kingdom.
University College London and Anna Freud, United Kingdom.
Econ Educ Rev. 2023 Oct;96:None. doi: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2023.102425.
In light of the dramatic rise in mental health disorders amongst adolescents seen in the past decade across the world, there is an urgent need for robust evidence on what works to combat this trend. This paper provides the first robust evaluation of the impacts on school outcomes of 6-year funding programme () for area-level mental health interventions for adolescents. Exploiting educational administrative data on ten cohorts of state-educated secondary school students, we use the synthetic control method to construct counterfactual outcomes for areas that received the funding. We show that the funding did not affect students' absenteeism or academic attainment, but it prevented around 800 students (c. 10% of students typically excluded yearly) from being excluded in its first year. The transient nature of this effect suggests that sustained funding for intervention may be a necessary but not sufficient condition to maintain programme effectiveness over time.
鉴于在过去十年中全球范围内青少年心理健康障碍显著增加，迫切需要有力证据来证明哪些措施能有效应对这一趋势。本文首次对一项针对青少年地区层面心理健康干预措施的6年资助计划（）对学校成果的影响进行了有力评估。利用关于十组接受公立教育的中学生的教育行政数据，我们使用合成控制法为获得资助的地区构建反事实结果。我们发现，该资助并未影响学生的缺勤率或学业成绩，但在第一年防止了约800名学生（约占每年通常被开除学生的10%）被开除。这种效果的短暂性表明，持续的干预资金可能是随着时间推移维持项目有效性的必要但不充分条件。
