The latest edition of the Brock Education Journal, Critical Perspectives on Mental Health in Education: Striving for Social Justice, is now available.

Current scholarship that analyzes ‘mental health’ as a dynamic, socio-political and cultural construct often leaves out intersectional social factors and determinants of health and well-being. This special issue will bring attention to this need for work in critical mental health within the context of the field of education. Despite increased awareness in the fields of critical mental health studies (Cohen, 2017) and Mad Studies (LeFrançois et al., 2013; Beresford & Russo, 2021), much of the literature pertaining to mental health and well-being in schools adheres to biologically essentialist and reductionist understandings of mental health and well-being. This has the effect of limiting and narrowing understandings of mental health. This depoliticization of mental health can cause conversations regarding mental health in education to not be considered through an intersectional analytic that also considers the ongoing effects of settler colonialism, white supremacy, cis-heteropatriarchy, ableism, sanism, neoliberalism, and capitalism on educators, students, and school communities.

In this call for papers, we seek contributions that are invested in conversations regarding critical approaches to understanding mental health in schooling and education, with “education” and “schooling” including early years education, K-12 schooling, and higher education. We seek contributions that take into consideration social determinants of health and well-being, critique reductionist understandings of mental health and well-being, and that place inclusive and affirming pedagogies at the forefront. We welcome contributions that centralize lived experiences and challenge dominant positivist approaches to researching mental health.

Guiding questions include: How can schooling and education centralize the mental health and well-being of children, youth, students, educators, and others in their collective communities through culturally-affirming, intersectional, and critical pedagogies and practices? How might schooling and education perpetuate epistemic harms and injustices relating to the silencing and disenfranchisement of students and educators who experience mental distress, or identify with madness or as Mad? In what ways can schooling and education work with transformative praxis and consciousness-raising practices (Freire, 1970) that can seek the overall health and wellness of all students and educators?