Teacher-student relationships and mental health help seeking behaviors among elementary and secondary students in Ontario Canada

This study examined associations between teacher-student relationship quality at school and teachers' responsiveness to students' emotional concerns in a classroom and (a) students' intention to seek help at school for mental health concerns and (b) mental health-related service use. Data for analyses came from the School Mental Health Survey, a cross-sectional survey of 31,120 grade 6–12 students, in 1968 classrooms, attending 248 schools in Ontario, Canada. Three-level (student, classroom, school) binary logistic regression was used to address the study objectives. Student ratings of the quality of teacher-student relationships and teachers' responsiveness were included as predictors, both at the individual student level and aggregated to represent a contextual level characteristic at the school and classroom level, respectively. At the student level, both teacher-student relationship quality and teacher responsiveness were positively associated with intentions to seek help at school among both elementary and secondary students (ORs ranged from 1.14–1.19 for relationships and 1.06–1.08 for responsiveness). Aggregated to the school level, teacher-student relationship quality was positively associated with mental health service use for secondary students (OR = 1.36, 95% CI [1.10, 1.69]). Positive and responsive teacher-student relationships were associated with help-seeking behaviors among students. Longitudinal studies are warranted to disentangle the temporality of these associations.