homework mental health problems

• Second Opinion
• Research & Innovation
• Patients & Families
• Health Professionals
• Recently Visited
• Segunda opinión
• Refer a patient
• MyChart Login

Healthier, Happy Lives Blog

Sort articles by..., sort by category.

• Celebrating Volunteers
• Community Outreach
• Construction Updates
• Family-Centered Care
• Healthy Eating
• Heart Center
• Interesting Things
• Mental Health
• Patient Stories
• Research and Innovation
• Safety Tips
• Sustainability
• World-Class Care

About Our Blog

• Back-to-School
• Pediatric Technology

Latest Posts

• Stanford Medicine Children’s Health Draws Attention to Sustainability Through Recycled Art
• Boy With Short Bowel Syndrome Living the Dream of a Better Life
• NICU Sims Set Stage for Lifesaving Care
• How a Social Media Post Led a Teen to Find a ‘Kidney Buddy’ for Life
• Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorder in Young Children

Health Hazards of Homework

March 18, 2014 | Julie Greicius Pediatrics .

A new study by the Stanford Graduate School of Education and colleagues found that students in high-performing schools who did excessive hours of homework “experienced greater behavioral engagement in school but also more academic stress, physical health problems, and lack of balance in their lives.”

Those health problems ranged from stress, headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems, to psycho-social effects like dropping activities, not seeing friends or family, and not pursuing hobbies they enjoy.

In the Stanford Report story about the research, Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the  study published in the  Journal of Experimental Education , says, “Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good.”

The study was based on survey data from a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in California communities in which median household income exceeded $90,000. Of the students surveyed, homework volume averaged about 3.1 hours each night.

“It is time to re-evaluate how the school environment is preparing our high school student for today’s workplace,” says Neville Golden, MD , chief of adolescent medicine at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health and a professor at the School of Medicine. “This landmark study shows that excessive homework is counterproductive, leading to sleep deprivation, school stress and other health problems. Parents can best support their children in these demanding academic environments by advocating for them through direct communication with teachers and school administrators about homework load.”

Related Posts

Top-ranked group group in Los Gatos, Calif., is now a part of one of the…

The Stanford Medicine Children’s Health network continues to grow with our newest addition, Town and…

• Julie Greicius
• more by this author...

Connect with us:

Download our App:

ABOUT STANFORD MEDICINE CHILDREN'S HEALTH

• Leadership Team
• Vision, Mission & Values
• The Stanford Advantage
• Government and Community Relations

LUCILE PACKARD FOUNDATION FOR CHILDREN'S HEALTH

• Get Involved
• Volunteering Services
• Auxiliaries & Affiliates
• Our Hospital
• Send a Greeting Card
• New Hospital
• Refer a Patient
• Pay Your Bill

Also Find Us on:

• Notice of Nondiscrimination
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Code of Conduct
• Price Transparency
• Stanford Medicine
• Stanford University
• Stanford Health Care

• Future Students
• Current Students
• Faculty/Staff

News and Media

• News & Media Home
• Research Stories
• School's In
• In the Media

You are here

More than two hours of homework may be counterproductive, research suggests.

A Stanford education researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.   "Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good," wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .   The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students' views on homework.   Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.   Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.   "The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students' advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being," Pope wrote.   Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.   Their study found that too much homework is associated with:   • Greater stress : 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.   • Reductions in health : In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.   • Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits : Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were "not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills," according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.   A balancing act   The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.   Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as "pointless" or "mindless" in order to keep their grades up.   "This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points," said Pope, who is also a co-founder of Challenge Success , a nonprofit organization affiliated with the GSE that conducts research and works with schools and parents to improve students' educational experiences..   Pope said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.   "Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development," wrote Pope.   High-performing paradox   In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. "Young people are spending more time alone," they wrote, "which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities."   Student perspectives   The researchers say that while their open-ended or "self-reporting" methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for "typical adolescent complaining" – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.   The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Clifton B. Parker is a writer at the Stanford News Service .

More Stories

⟵ Go to all Research Stories

Get the Educator

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

Stanford Graduate School of Education

482 Galvez Mall Stanford, CA 94305-3096 Tel: (650) 723-2109

• Contact Admissions
• GSE Leadership
• Site Feedback
• Web Accessibility
• Career Resources
• Faculty Open Positions
• Explore Courses
• Academic Calendar
• Office of the Registrar
• Cubberley Library
• StanfordWho
• StanfordYou

Improving lives through learning

• Stanford Home
• Maps & Directions
• Search Stanford
• Emergency Info
• Terms of Use
• Non-Discrimination
• Accessibility

© Stanford University , Stanford , California 94305 .

Search form

• Find Stories
• For Journalists

Stanford research shows pitfalls of homework

A Stanford researcher found that students in high-achieving communities who spend too much time on homework experience more stress, physical health problems, a lack of balance and even alienation from society. More than two hours of homework a night may be counterproductive, according to the study.

Education scholar Denise Pope has found that too much homework has negative effects on student well-being and behavioral engagement. (Image credit: L.A. Cicero)

A Stanford researcher found that too much homework can negatively affect kids, especially their lives away from school, where family, friends and activities matter.

“Our findings on the effects of homework challenge the traditional assumption that homework is inherently good,” wrote Denise Pope , a senior lecturer at the Stanford Graduate School of Education and a co-author of a study published in the Journal of Experimental Education .

The researchers used survey data to examine perceptions about homework, student well-being and behavioral engagement in a sample of 4,317 students from 10 high-performing high schools in upper-middle-class California communities. Along with the survey data, Pope and her colleagues used open-ended answers to explore the students’ views on homework.

Median household income exceeded $90,000 in these communities, and 93 percent of the students went on to college, either two-year or four-year.

Students in these schools average about 3.1 hours of homework each night.

“The findings address how current homework practices in privileged, high-performing schools sustain students’ advantage in competitive climates yet hinder learning, full engagement and well-being,” Pope wrote.

Pope and her colleagues found that too much homework can diminish its effectiveness and even be counterproductive. They cite prior research indicating that homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night, and that 90 minutes to two and a half hours is optimal for high school.

Their study found that too much homework is associated with:

• Greater stress: 56 percent of the students considered homework a primary source of stress, according to the survey data. Forty-three percent viewed tests as a primary stressor, while 33 percent put the pressure to get good grades in that category. Less than 1 percent of the students said homework was not a stressor.

• Reductions in health: In their open-ended answers, many students said their homework load led to sleep deprivation and other health problems. The researchers asked students whether they experienced health issues such as headaches, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, weight loss and stomach problems.

• Less time for friends, family and extracurricular pursuits: Both the survey data and student responses indicate that spending too much time on homework meant that students were “not meeting their developmental needs or cultivating other critical life skills,” according to the researchers. Students were more likely to drop activities, not see friends or family, and not pursue hobbies they enjoy.

A balancing act

The results offer empirical evidence that many students struggle to find balance between homework, extracurricular activities and social time, the researchers said. Many students felt forced or obligated to choose homework over developing other talents or skills.

Also, there was no relationship between the time spent on homework and how much the student enjoyed it. The research quoted students as saying they often do homework they see as “pointless” or “mindless” in order to keep their grades up.

“This kind of busy work, by its very nature, discourages learning and instead promotes doing homework simply to get points,” Pope said.

She said the research calls into question the value of assigning large amounts of homework in high-performing schools. Homework should not be simply assigned as a routine practice, she said.

“Rather, any homework assigned should have a purpose and benefit, and it should be designed to cultivate learning and development,” wrote Pope.

High-performing paradox

In places where students attend high-performing schools, too much homework can reduce their time to foster skills in the area of personal responsibility, the researchers concluded. “Young people are spending more time alone,” they wrote, “which means less time for family and fewer opportunities to engage in their communities.”

Student perspectives

The researchers say that while their open-ended or “self-reporting” methodology to gauge student concerns about homework may have limitations – some might regard it as an opportunity for “typical adolescent complaining” – it was important to learn firsthand what the students believe.

The paper was co-authored by Mollie Galloway from Lewis and Clark College and Jerusha Conner from Villanova University.

Homework Struggles May Not Be a Behavior Problem

Exploring some options to understand and help..

Posted August 2, 2022 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan

• Mental health challenges and neurodevelopmental differences directly affect children's ability to do homework.
• Understanding what difficulties are getting in the way—beyond the usual explanation of a behavior problem—is key.
• Sleep and mental health needs can take priority over homework completion.

Chelsea was in 10th grade the first time I told her directly to stop doing her homework and get some sleep. I had been working with her since she was in middle school, treating her anxiety disorder. She deeply feared disappointing anyone—especially her teachers—and spent hours trying to finish homework perfectly. The more tired and anxious she got, the harder it got for her to finish the assignments.

One night Chelsea called me in despair, feeling hopeless. She was exhausted and couldn’t think straight. She felt like a failure and that she was a burden to everyone because she couldn’t finish her homework.

She was shocked when I told her that my prescription for her was to go to sleep now—not to figure out how to finish her work. I told her to leave her homework incomplete and go to sleep. We briefly discussed how we would figure it out the next day, with her mom and her teachers. At that moment, it clicked for her that it was futile to keep working—because nothing was getting done.

This was an inflection point for her awareness of when she was emotionally over-cooked and when she needed to stop and take a break or get some sleep. We repeated versions of this phone call several times over the course of her high school and college years, but she got much better at being able to do this for herself most of the time.

When Mental Health Symptoms Interfere with Homework

Kids with mental health or neurodevelopmental challenges often struggle mightily with homework. Challenges can come up in every step of the homework process, including, but not limited to:

• Remembering and tracking assignments and materials
• Getting the mental energy/organization to start homework
• Filtering distractions enough to persist with assignments
• Understanding unspoken or implied parts of the homework
• Remembering to bring finished homework to class
• Being in class long enough to know the material
• Tolerating the fear of not knowing or failing
• Not giving up the assignment because of a panic attack
• Tolerating frustration—such as not understanding—without emotional dysregulation
• Being able to ask for help—from a peer or a teacher and not being afraid to reach out

This list is hardly comprehensive. ADHD , autism spectrum disorder, social anxiety , generalized anxiety, panic disorder, depression , dysregulation, and a range of other neurodevelopmental and mental health challenges cause numerous learning differences and symptoms that can specifically and frequently interfere with getting homework done.

The Usual Diagnosis for Homework Problems is "Not Trying Hard Enough"

Unfortunately, when kids frequently struggle to meet homework demands, teachers and parents typically default to one explanation of the problem: The child is making a choice not to do their homework. That is the default “diagnosis” in classrooms and living rooms. And once this framework is drawn, the student is often seen as not trying hard enough, disrespectful, manipulative, or just plain lazy.

The fundamental disconnect here is that the diagnosis of homework struggles as a behavioral choice is, in fact, only one explanation, while there are so many other diagnoses and differences that impair children's ability to consistently do their homework. If we are trying to create solutions based on only one understanding of the problem, the solutions will not work. More devastatingly, the wrong solutions can worsen the child’s mental health and their long-term engagement with school and learning.

To be clear, we aren’t talking about children who sometimes struggle with or skip homework—kids who can change and adapt their behaviors and patterns in response to the outcomes of that struggle. For this discussion, we are talking about children with mental health and/or neurodevelopmental symptoms and challenges that create chronic difficulties with meeting homework demands.

How Can You Help a Child Who Struggles with Homework?

How can you help your child who is struggling to meet homework demands because of their ADHD, depression, anxiety, OCD , school avoidance, or any other neurodevelopmental or mental health differences? Let’s break this down into two broad areas—things you can do at home, and things you can do in communication with the school.

Helping at Home

The following suggestions for managing school demands at home can feel counterintuitive to parents—because we usually focus on helping our kids to complete their tasks. But mental health needs jump the line ahead of task completion. And starting at home will be key to developing an idea of what needs to change at school.

• Set an end time in the evening after which no more homework will be attempted. Kids need time to decompress and they need sleep—and pushing homework too close to or past bedtime doesn’t serve their educational needs. Even if your child hasn’t been able to approach the homework at all, even if they have avoided and argued the whole evening, it is still important for everyone to have a predictable time to shut down the whole process.
• If there are arguments almost every night about homework, if your child isn’t starting homework or finishing it, reframe it from failure into information. It’s data to put into problem-solving. We need to consider other possible explanations besides “behavioral choice” when trying to understand the problem and create effective solutions. What problems are getting in the way of our child’s meeting homework demands that their peers are meeting most of the time?
• Try not to argue about homework. If you can check your own anxiety and frustration, it can be more productive to ally with your child and be curious with them. Kids usually can’t tell you a clear “why” but maybe they can tell you how they are feeling and what they are thinking. And if your child can’t talk about it or just keeps saying “I don't know,” try not to push. Come back another time. Rushing, forcing, yelling, and threatening will predictably not help kids do homework.

Helping at School

The second area to explore when your neurodiverse child struggles frequently with homework is building communication and connections with school and teachers. Some places to focus on include the following.

• Label your child’s diagnoses and break down specific symptoms for the teachers and school team. Nonjudgmental, but specific language is essential for teachers to understand your child’s struggles. Breaking their challenges down into the problems specific to homework can help with building solutions. As your child gets older, help them identify their difficulties and communicate them to teachers.
• Let teachers and the school team know that your child’s mental health needs—including sleep—take priority over finishing homework. If your child is always struggling to complete homework and get enough sleep, or if completing homework is leading to emotional meltdowns every night, adjusting their homework demands will be more successful than continuing to push them into sleep deprivation or meltdowns.
• Request a child study team evaluation to determine if your child qualifies for services under special education law such as an IEP, or accommodations through section 504—and be sure that homework adjustments are included in any plan. Or if such a plan is already in place, be clear that modification of homework expectations needs to be part of it.

The Long-Term Story

I still work with Chelsea and she recently mentioned how those conversations so many years ago are still part of how she approaches work tasks or other demands that are spiking her anxiety when she finds herself in a vortex of distress. She stops what she is doing and prioritizes reducing her anxiety—whether it’s a break during her day or an ending to the task for the evening. She sees that this is crucial to managing her anxiety in her life and still succeeding at what she is doing.

Task completion at all costs is not a solution for kids with emotional needs. Her story (and the story of many of my patients) make this crystal clear.

Candida Fink, M.D. , is board certified in child/adolescent and general psychiatry. She practices in New York and has co-authored two books— The Ups and Downs of Raising a Bipolar Child and Bipolar Disorder for Dummies.

• Find a Therapist
• Find a Treatment Center
• Find a Psychiatrist
• Find a Support Group
• Find Teletherapy
• United States
• Brooklyn, NY
• Chicago, IL
• Houston, TX
• Los Angeles, CA
• New York, NY
• Portland, OR
• San Diego, CA
• San Francisco, CA
• Seattle, WA
• Washington, DC
• Asperger's
• Bipolar Disorder
• Chronic Pain
• Eating Disorders
• Passive Aggression
• Personality
• Goal Setting
• Positive Psychology
• Stopping Smoking
• Low Sexual Desire
• Relationships
• Child Development
• Therapy Center NEW
• Diagnosis Dictionary
• Types of Therapy

Understanding what emotional intelligence looks like and the steps needed to improve it could light a path to a more emotionally adept world.

• Coronavirus Disease 2019
• Affective Forecasting
• Neuroscience

Homework as a Mental Health Concern It's time for an in depth discussion about homework as a major concern for those pursuing mental health in schools. So many problems between kids and their families, the home and school, and students and teachers arise from conflicts over homework. The topic is a long standing concern for mental health practitioners, especially those who work in schools. Over the years, we have tried to emphasize the idea that schools need to ensure that homework is designed as "motivated practice," and parents need to avoid turning homework into a battleground. These views are embedded in many of the Center documents. At this time, we hope you will join in a discussion of what problems you see arising related to homework and what you recommend as ways to deal with such problems, what positive homework practices you know about, and so forth. Read the material that follows, and then, let us hear from you on this topic. Contact: [email protected] ######################### As one stimulus, here's a piece by Sharon Cromwell from Education World prepared for teachers " The Homework Dilemma: How Much Should Parents Get Involved? " http://www.education-world.com/a_curr/curr053.shtml . What can teachers do to help parents help their children with homework? Just what kind of parental involvement -- and how much involvement -- truly helps children with their homework? The most useful stance parents can take, many experts agree, is to be somewhat but not overly involved in homework. The emphasis needs to be on parents' helping children do their homework themselves -- not on doing it for them. In an Instructor magazine article, How to Make Parents Your Homework Partner s, study-skills consultant Judy Dodge maintains that involving students in homework is largely the teacher's job, yet parents can help by "creating a home environment that's conducive to kids getting their homework done." Children who spend more time on homework, on average, do better academically than children who don't, and the academic benefits of homework increase in the upper grades, according to Helping Your Child With Homework , a handbook by the Office of Education Research and Improvement in the U.S. Department of Education. The handbook offers ideas for helping children finish homework assignments successfully and answers questions that parents and people who care for elementary and junior high school students often ask about homework. One of the Goals 2000 goals involves the parent/school relationship. The goal reads, "Every school will promote partnerships that will increase parental involvement and participation in promoting the social, emotional, and academic growth of children." Teachers can pursue the goal, in part, by communicating to parents their reasons for assigning homework. For example, the handbook states, homework can help children to review and practice what they have learned; prepare for the next day's class; use resources, such as libraries and reference materials; investigate topics more fully than time allows in the classroom. Parents can help children excel at homework by setting a regular time; choosing a place; removing distractions; having supplies and resources on hand; monitoring assignments; and providing guidance. The handbook cautions against actually doing the homework for a child, but talking about the assignment so the child can figure out what needs to be done is OK. And reviewing a completed assignment with a child can also be helpful. The kind of help that works best depends, of course, partly on the child's age. Elementary school students who are doing homework for the first time may need more direct involvement than older students. HOMEWORK "TIPS" Specific methods have been developed for encouraging the optimal parental involvement in homework. TIPS (Teachers Involve Parents in Schoolwork) Interactive Homework process was designed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and teachers in Maryland, Virginia, and the District of Columbia to meet parents' and teachers' needs, says the Phi Delta Kappa Research Bulletin . The September 1997 bulletin reported the effects of TIPS-Language Arts on middle-grade students' writing skills, language arts report card grades, and attitudes toward TIPS as well as parents' reactions to interactive homework. TIPS interactive homework assignments involve students in demonstrating or discussing homework with a family member. Parents are asked to monitor, interact, and support their children. They are not required to read or direct the students' assignments because that is the students' responsibility. All TIPS homework has a section for home-to-school communication where parents indicate their interaction with the student about the homework. The goals of the TIPS process are for parents to gain knowledge about their children's school work, students to gain mastery in academic subjects by enhancing school lessons at home, and teachers to have an understanding of the parental contribution to student learning. "TIPS" RESULTS Nearly all parents involved in the TIPS program said TIPS provided them with information about what their children were studying in school. About 90 percent of the parents wanted the school to continue TIPS the following year. More than 80 percent of the families liked the TIPS process (44 percent a lot; 36% a little). TIPS activities were better than regular homework, according to 60 percent of the students who participated. About 70 percent wanted the school to use TIPS the next year. According to Phi Delta Kappa Research Bulletin , more family involvement helped students' writing skills increase, even when prior writing skills were taken into account. And completing more TIPS assignments improved students' language arts grades on report cards, even after prior report card grades and attendance were taken into account. Of the eight teachers involved, six liked the TIPS process and intended to go on using it without help or supplies from the researchers. Furthermore, seven of the eight teachers said TIPS "helps families see what their children are learning in class." OTHER TIPS In "How to Make Parents Your Homework Partners," Judy Dodge suggests that teachers begin giving parent workshops to provide practical tips for "winning the homework battle." At the workshop, teachers should focus on three key study skills: Organizational skills -- Help put students in control of work and to feel sure that they can master what they need to learn and do. Parents can, for example, help students find a "steady study spot" with the materials they need at hand. Time-management skills -- Enable students to complete work without feeling too much pressure and to have free time. By working with students to set a definite study time, for example, parents can help with time management. Active study strategies -- Help students to achieve better outcomes from studying. Parents suggest, for instance, that students write questions they think will be on a test and then recite their answers out loud. Related Resources Homework Without Tears by Lee Canter and Lee Hauser (Perennial Library, 1987). A down-to-earth book by well-known experts suggests how to deal with specific homework problems. Megaskills: How Families Can Help Children Succeed in School and Beyond by Dorothy Rich (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1992). Families can help children develop skills that nurture success in and out of school. "Helping Your Student Get the Most Out of Homework" by the National PTA and the National Education Association (1995). This booklet for teachers to use with students is sold in packages of 25 through the National PTA. The Catalog item is #B307. Call 312-549-3253 or write National PTA Orders, 135 South LaSalle Street, Dept. 1860, Chicago, IL 60674-1860. Related Sites A cornucopia of homework help is available for children who use a computer or whose parents are willing to help them get started online. The following LINKS include Internet sites that can be used for reference, research, and overall resources for both homework and schoolwork. Dr. Internet. The Dr. Internet Web site, part of the Internet Public Library, helps students with science and math homework or projects. It includes a science project resource guide Help With Homework. His extensive listing of Internet links is divided into Language Art Links, Science Links, Social Studies Links, Homework Help, Kids Education, and Universities. If students know what they are looking for, the site could be invaluable. Kidz-Net... Links to places where you can get help with homework. An array of homework help links is offered here, from Ask Dr. Math (which provides answers to math questions) to Roget's Thesaurus and the White House. Surfing the Net With Kids: Got Questions? Links to people -- such as teachers, librarians, experts, authors, and other students -- who will help students with questions about homework. Barbara J. Feldman put together the links. Kidsurfer: For Kids and Teens The site, from the National Children's Coalition, includes a Homework/Reference section for many subjects, including science, geography, music, history, and language arts. Homework: Parents' Work, Kid's Work, or School Work? A quick search of this title in the Education Week Archives and you'll find an article presenting a parent's viewpoint on helping children with homework. @#@#@#@@# As another stimulus for the discussion, here is an excerpt from our online continuing education module Enhancing Classroom Approaches for Addressing Barriers to Learning ( https://smhp.psych.ucla.edu ) Turning Homework into Motivated Practice Most of us have had the experience of wanting to be good at something such as playing a musical instrument or participating in a sport. What we found out was that becoming good at it meant a great deal of practice, and the practicing often was not very much fun. In the face of this fact, many of us turned to other pursuits. In some cases, individuals were compelled by their parents to labor on, and many of these sufferers grew to dislike the activity. (A few, of course, commend their parents for pushing them, but be assured these are a small minority. Ask your friends who were compelled to practice the piano.) Becoming good at reading, mathematics, writing, and other academic pursuits requires practice outside the classroom. This, of course, is called homework. Properly designed, homework can benefit students. Inappropriately designed homework, however, can lead to avoidance, parent-child conflicts, teacher reproval, and student dislike of various arenas of learning. Well-designed homework involves assignments that emphasize motivated practice. As with all learning processes that engage students, motivated practice requires designing activities that the student perceives as worthwhile and doable with an appropriate amount of effort. In effect, the intent is to personalize in-class practice and homework. This does not mean every student has a different practice activity. Teachers quickly learn what their students find engaging and can provide three or four practice options that will be effective for most students in a class. The idea of motivated practice is not without its critics. I don't doubt that students would prefer an approach to homework that emphasized motivated practice. But �� that's not preparing them properly for the real world. People need to work even when it isn't fun, and most of the time work isn't fun. Also, if a person wants to be good at something, they need to practice it day in and day out, and that's not fun! In the end, won't all this emphasis on motivation spoil people so that they won't want to work unless it's personally relevant and interesting? We believe that a great deal of learning and practice activities can be enjoyable. But even if they are not, they can be motivating if they are viewed as worthwhile and experienced as satisfying. At the same time, we do recognize that there are many things people have to do in their lives that will not be viewed and experienced in a positive way. How we all learn to put up with such circumstances is an interesting question, but one for which psychologists have yet to find a satisfactory answer. It is doubtful, however, that people have to experience the learning and practice of basic knowledge and skills as drudgery in order to learn to tolerate boring situations. Also in response to critics of motivated practice, there is the reality that many students do not master what they have been learning because they do not pursue the necessary practice activities. Thus, at least for such individuals, it seems essential to facilitate motivated practice. Minimally, facilitating motivated practice requires establishing a variety of task options that are potentially challenging -- neither too easy nor too hard. However, as we have stressed, the processes by which tasks are chosen must lead to perceptions on the part of the learner that practice activities, task outcomes, or both are worthwhile -- especially as potential sources of personal satisfaction. The examples in the following exhibit illustrate ways in which activities can be varied to provide for motivated learning and practice. Because most people have experienced a variety of reading and writing activities, the focus here is on other types of activity. Students can be encouraged to pursue such activity with classsmates and/or family members. Friends with common interests can provide positive models and support that can enhance productivity and even creativity. Research on motivation indicates that one of the most powerful factors keeping a person on a task is the expectation of feeling some sense of satisfaction when the task is completed. For example, task persistence results from the expectation that one will feel smart or competent while performing the task or at least will feel that way after the skill is mastered. Within some limits, the stronger the sense of potential outcome satisfaction, the more likely practice will be pursued even when the practice activities are rather dull. The weaker the sense of potential outcome satisfaction, the more the practice activities themselves need to be positively motivating. Exhibit � Homework and Motivated Practice Learning and practicing by (1) doing using movement and manipulation of objects to explore a topic (e.g., using coins to learn to add and subtract) dramatization of events (e.g., historical, current) role playing and simulations (e.g., learning about democratic vs. autocratic government by trying different models in class; learning about contemporary life and finances by living on a budget) actual interactions (e.g., learning about human psychology through analysis of daily behavior) applied activities (e.g., school newspapers, film and video productions, band, sports) actual work experience (e.g., on-the-job learning) (2) listening reading to students (e.g., to enhance their valuing of literature) audio media (e.g., tapes, records, and radio presentations of music, stories, events) listening games and activities (e.g., Simon Says; imitating rhymes, rhythms, and animal sounds) analyzing actual oral material (e.g., learning to detect details and ideas in advertisements or propaganda presented on radio or television, learning to identify feelings and motives underlying statements of others) (3) looking directly observing experts, role models, and demonstrations visual media visual games and activities (e.g., puzzles, reproducing designs, map activities) analyzing actual visual material (e.g., learning to find and identify ideas observed in daily events) (4) asking information gathering (e.g., investigative reporting, interviewing, and opinion sampling at school and in the community) brainstorming answers to current problems and puzzling questions inquiry learning (e.g., learning social studies and science by identifying puzzling questions, formulating hypotheses, gathering and interpreting information, generalizing answers, and raising new questions) question-and-answer games and activities (e.g., twenty questions, provocative and confrontational questions) questioning everyday events (e.g., learning about a topic by asking people about how it effects their lives) O.K. That's should be enough to get you going. What's your take on all this? What do you think we all should be telling teachers and parents about homework? Let us hear from you ( [email protected] ). Back to Hot Topic Home Page Hot Topic Home Page --> Table of Contents Home Page Search Send Us Email School Mental Health Project-UCLA Center for Mental Health in Schools WebMaster: Perry Nelson ([email protected])

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

• Publications
• Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

• Advanced Search
• Journal List
• HHS Author Manuscripts

Barriers Associated with the Implementation of Homework in Youth Mental Health Treatment and Potential Mobile Health Solutions

Brian e. bunnell.

1 Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA

2 Biomedical Informatics Center, College of Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

Lynne S. Nemeth

3 Department of Nursing, College of Nursing, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

Leslie A. Lenert

Nikolaos kazantzis.

4 Cognitive Behavior Therapy Research Unit and School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

Esther Deblinger

5 Child Abuse Research Education & Service (CARES) Institute, Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine, Stratford, New Jersey, USA

Kristen A. Higgins

Kenneth j. ruggiero.

6 Technology Applications Center for Healthful Lifestyles, College of Nursing, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC, USA

Author Contributions

Associated Data

Background:.

Homework, or between-session practice of skills learned during therapy, is integral to effective youth mental health TREATMENTS. However, homework is often under-utilized by providers and patients due to many barriers, which might be mitigated via m Health solutions.

Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with nationally certified trainers in Trauma Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT; n =21) and youth TF-CBT patients ages 8–17 ( n =15) and their caregivers ( n =12) to examine barriers to the successful implementation of homework in youth mental health treatment and potential m Health solutions to those barriers.

The results indicated that many providers struggle to consistently develop, assign, and assess homework exercises with their patients. Patients are often difficult to engage and either avoid or have difficulty remembering to practice exercises, especially given their busy/chaotic home lives. Trainers and families had positive views and useful suggestions for m Health solutions to these barriers in terms of functionality (e.g., reminders, tracking, pre-made homework exercises, rewards) and user interface (e.g., easy navigation, clear instructions, engaging activities).

Conclusions:

This study adds to the literature on homework barriers and potential m Health solutions to those barriers, which is largely based on recommendations from experts in the field. The results aligned well with this literature, providing additional support for existing recommendations, particularly as they relate to treatment with youth and caregivers.

Introduction

Homework, or between-session practice of skills learned during therapy, is one of the most integral, yet underutilized components of high-quality, evidence-based mental health care ( Kazantzis & Deane, 1999 ). Homework activities (e.g., self-monitoring, relaxation, exposure, parent behavior management) are assigned by providers in-session and completed by patients between sessions with the goal of “practicing” therapeutic skills in the environment where they will be most needed ( Kazantzis, Deane, Ronan, & L’Abate, 2005 ). There are numerous benefits to the implementation of homework during mental health treatment ( Kazantzis et al., 2016 ; Kazantzis, Deane, & Ronan, 2004 ). Homework enables the generalization of skills and behaviors learned during therapy, facilitates treatment processes, provides continuity between sessions, allows providers to better grasp patients’ learning, and strengthens that learning, leading to improved maintenance of treatment gains ( Hudson & Kendall, 2002 ; Scheel, Hanson, & Razzhavaikina, 2004 ). Meta-analytic and systematic reviews have shown that homework use by providers and adherence by patients predict increased treatment engagement, decreased treatment dropout, and medium-to-large effects on improvements in clinical outcomes for use (Cohen’s d =.48–.77) and adherence ( d =.45–.54) ( Hudson & Kendall, 2002 ; Kazantzis, Deane, & Ronan, 2000 ; Kazantzis & Lampropoulos, 2002 ; Kazantzis, Whittington, & Dattilio, 2010 ; Mausbach, Moore, Roesch, Cardenas, & Patterson, 2010 ; Scheel et al., 2004 ; Sukhodolsky, Kassinove, & Gorman, 2004 ). Simply put, 68% vs . 32% of patients can be expected to improve when therapy involves homework ( Kazantzis et al., 2010 ).

Despite its many benefits, homework is implemented with variable effectiveness in mental health treatment. Only 68% of general mental health providers and ~55% of family providers report using homework “often” to “almost always” ( Dattilio, Kazantzis, Shinkfield, & Carr, 2011 ; Kazantzis, Lampropoulos, & Deane, 2005 ). Further, providers report using homework in an average of 57% of sessions, although this rate is higher for CBT practitioners (66%) vs . non-CBT practitioners (48%). Moreover, only 25% of providers report using expert recommended systematic procedures for recommending homework (i.e., specifying frequency, duration, and location; writing down homework assignments for patients) ( Kazantzis & Deane, 1999 ). A national survey revealed that 93% or general mental health providers estimate rates of patient adherence to homework to be low to moderate ( Kazantzis, Lampropoulos, et al., 2005 ), and research studies report low to moderate rates of youth/caregiver adherence during treatment (i.e., ~39–63%; ( Berkovits, O’Brien, Carter, & Eyberg, 2010 ; Clarke et al., 1992 ; Danko, Brown, Van Schoick, & Budd, 2016 ; Dattilio et al., 2011 ; Gaynor, Lawrence, & Nelson-Gray, 2006 ; Helbig & Fehm, 2004 ; Lyon & Budd, 2010 ; Simons et al., 2012 ).

Numerous barriers to the successful implementation of homework during mental health treatment have largely been suggested by experts in the field, rather than specifically measured ( Dattilio et al., 2011 ), and have generally been classified as occurring on the provider-, patient-, task-, and environmental-level ( Kazantzis & Shinkfield, 2007 ). Provider-level barriers can relate to the therapeutic relationship and the degree to which a collaborative approach is used, provider beliefs about homework and the patient’s adherence, and providers’ ability to effectively design homework tasks ( Callan et al., 2012 ; Coon, Rabinowitz, Thompson, & Gallagher-Thompson, 2005 ; Friedberg & Mcclure, 2005 ; Garland & Scott, 2002 ; Kazantzis & Shinkfield, 2007 ). Patient-level barriers can include patient avoidance and symptomatology, negative beliefs toward the task, not understanding the rationale or how to do the task, forgetting, and beliefs about their ability to complete homework tasks. ( Bru, Solholm, & Idsoe, 2013 ; Callan et al., 2012 ; Dattilio et al., 2011 ; Friedberg & Mcclure, 2005 ; Garland & Scott, 2002 ; Hudson & Kendall, 2005 ; Kazantzis & Shinkfield, 2007 ; Leahy, 2002 ). Relatedly, core beliefs central to the patients’ psychopathology can be activated during homework–thereby triggering withdrawal and avoidance patterns ( Kazantzis & Shinkfield, 2007 ). Task-level barriers include poor match between tasks and therapy goals, tasks that are perceived as vague or unclear, tasks that are perceived as too difficult or demanding in terms of time or effort, tasks being viewed as boring, and general aversiveness of the idea of completing homework ( Bru et al., 2013 ; Callan et al., 2012 ; Dattilio et al., 2011 ; Friedberg & Mcclure, 2005 ; Garland & Scott, 2002 ; Hudson & Kendall, 2005 ). Environmental factors have been noted to include practical obstacles, lack of family/caregiver support, dysfunctional home environments, lack of time due to busy schedules, and lack of reward or reinforcement ( Callan et al., 2012 ; Dattilio et al., 2011 ; Hudson & Kendall, 2005 ).

The advancement and ubiquitousness of technologies such as m Health resources (e.g., mobile- and web-based apps) provide a tremendous opportunity to overcome barriers to homework use and adherence and resultantly, improve the quality of mental health treatment. m Health solutions to improve access and quality of care, have been widely investigated, are effective in facilitating behavior change, practical, desired by patients and providers, and available at low cost ( Amstadter, Broman-Fulks, Zinzow, Ruggiero, & Cercone, 2009 ; Boschen & Casey, 2008 ; Donker et al., 2013 ; Ehrenreich, Righter, Rocke, Dixon, & Himelhoch, 2011 ; Hanson et al., 2014 ; Heron & Smyth, 2010 ; Krebs & Duncan, 2015 ; Luxton, McCann, Bush, Mishkind, & Reger, 2011 ; Ruggiero, Saunders, Davidson, Cook, & Hanson, 2017 ). Existing m Health resources include features that can support homework implementation (e.g., voice and SMS reminders and feedback, self-monitoring and assessment, and modules and activities that can be used to facilitate between-session practice; Bakker, Kazantzis, Rickwood, & Rickard, 2016 ; Tang & Kreindler, 2017 ), but these resources were not designed with the express intention of addressing barriers to homework implementation, particularly for youth and family patient populations.

The extant literature on barriers to homework implementation is limited in that it is largely based on expert recommendations. Therefore, the first aim of this study was to explore provider, youth, and caregiver patient perspectives on barriers to the successful implementation of homework during youth mental health treatment. Further, m Health solutions to those barriers have not been explored, especially for youth and family patients. Thus, the second and third aims of this study were to obtain suggestions for m Health solutions to homework barriers and explore perceptions on the benefits and challenges associated with those m Health solutions.

Institutional Review Board approval was obtained prior to enrolling any participants in the study. The approach for this study was based on the constructivist grounded theory, which acknowledges the researcher’s prior knowledge and influence in the process and supports and guides conceptual framework development to understand interrelations between constructs ( Charmaz, 2006 ). This qualitative study used a thematic analysis of semi-structured interviews in a sample of nationally certified trainers in Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (TFCBT; Cohen, Mannarino, & Deblinger, 2017 ), youth who had engaged in TF-CBT, and their caregivers. The initial goal was to conduct interviews with 15–20 interviewees in each group to achieve theoretical saturation (i.e., no new information was derived), consistent with a prior study by members of the research team which used similar semi-structured interviews with national TF-CBT trainers ( Hanson et al., 2014 ), and recommendations by Morse (2000) given the relatively narrow scope and clear nature of the study. Interviews were conducted until interviewers and the study lead determined that no new pertinent information was being obtained.

Participants

National trainers..

Twenty-one national trainers in TF-CBT were interviewed. National trainers are mental health providers who completed a 15-month TF-CBT Train-the-Trainer program led by the TF-CBT developers. Trainers work extensively with numerous community mental health providers to problem-solve common barriers to clinical practice and thus, provide a unique perspective on the barriers to successful homework implementation and possible m Health solutions to those barriers. An e-mail invitation was sent to a list of approved TF-CBT trainers. Twenty-four trainers responded to this e-mail, 22 of whom agreed to participate in an interview, one of whom was unreachable after initial scheduling. Interviews were completed with a total of 21 trainers, who received a $25 gift card in compensation for their time.

Trainers had been treating children for an average of 23.29 years ( SD =8.80) and had been training providers for an average of 14.95 years ( SD =8.98). In the year prior to the interview, they led an average of 17 provider trainings ( SD =21.67) and trained roughly 345 providers ( SD =339.90). All trainers were licensed, and the majority were Clinical Psychologists (47.6%) and Social Workers (33.3%). The average age of trainers was 47.48 years ( SD =13.63) and the majority were female (71.4%), white (95.2%), and non-Hispanic/Latino (85.7%; see Table 1 ).

Trainer Demographics

Twelve families were interviewed for this study. Families were included if they had one or more youth between the ages of 8 and 17 years-of-age and a caregiver who had engaged in at least four sessions for TF-CBT. These criteria were chosen because TF-CBT is typically recommended for youth between the ages of 8 and 17 years-of-age and it was estimated that four sessions would have likely allowed for adequate time for patients to have received homework assignments, consistent with the authors’ experience and prior TF-CBT literature ( Deblinger, Pollio, & Dorsey, 2016 ; Scheeringa, Weems, Cohen, Amaya-Jackson, & Guthrie, 2011 ). Families were recruited via advertisements online and at local community mental health clinics, and from a participant pool from a prior study ( Davidson et al., 2019 ). Twenty-nine families initially expressed interest in participating in the study. Six families were ineligible because they had not received TF-CBT and contact was lost with six families after their initial contact. Seventeen families were scheduled for an interview, five of which were unreachable after initially being scheduled, and interviews were completed with 12 families. Written informed consent from caregivers and assent from youth above the age of 15 were obtained in-person for four families and via a telemedicine-based teleconsent platform (i.e., https://musc.doxy.me ) for eight families. Families received a $30 gift card in compensation for their time.

A total of 15 youth who had engaged in TF-CBT, and their caregivers ( n =12; three families had two youth who had received treatment) were interviewed. Six youth were still in treatment at the time of their interview and nine had finished treatment an average of 49 weeks ( SD =42.32) prior to the interview. The average age of youth was 13.20 years ( SD =3.19), roughly half were female (53.3%), the majority were white (80%), and all were non-Hispanic/Latino. The average age of caregivers was 44.83 years ( SD =7.90), 66.7% were female, and all were White and non-Hispanic/Latino. Youth and caregivers rated their comfort with technology, in general, on a 10-point Likert scale (i.e., 1–10) with higher scores representing higher levels of comfort. Youth reported being very comfortable with technology (M=9.62, SD =1.12), as did their caregivers (M=7.83, SD =2.63; see Table 2 ).

Family Demographics

Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

TF-CBT is a well-established and widely disseminated mental health treatment ( Cohen et al., 2017 ; Deblinger, Mannarino, Cohen, Runyon, & Steer, 2011 ; Silverman et al., 2008 ; Wethington et al., 2008 ). It is a conjoint youth-caregiver mental health treatment typically conducted over ~12, 90-minute sessions that address nine major treatment components (i.e., P sychoeducation; P arenting Skills; R elaxation Skills; A ffective Expression and Modulation Skills; C ognitive Coping and Processing Skills; T rauma Narration and Processing; I n Vivo Exposure; C onjoint Child Parent Activities; and E nhancing Future Safety and Development). TF-CBT also addresses a broad range of symptom domains including trauma- and stress-related disorders, disruptive behavior disorders/behaviors, depression/depressive symptoms, and anxiety disorders ( Cohen et al., 2017 ). TF-CBT was chosen as a model treatment for this study because of its broad symptom focus, inclusion of treatment components used in a variety of youth mental health treatments, and involvement of youth and their caregivers, offering potential to improve the applicability of the study’s results to a range of youth mental health treatment approaches.

Procedures for Data Collection

Interviews were conducted via telephone for trainers, and either in-person or via telephone for families based on their preference. A postdoctoral fellow and masters-level research assistant conducted the interviews, which were audio-recorded and transcribed using a professional transcription service. Interviews included three major components. The first component included demographic questions. The second included a brief orientation to the goal of the study, which was to develop a new technology-based resource to help providers and patients during the implementation of homework during mental health treatment. The third component included questions that aimed to assess perspectives on barriers to homework implementation, elicit suggestions for m Health solutions to those barriers, and examine perceptions on the benefits and challenges associated with m Health solutions to homework barriers. The average duration of interviews was 41 minutes for trainers and 37 minutes for families. See Supplementary Materials for complete interviews.

Data Analysis

Transcribed interviews were coded using NVivo qualitative analysis software. NVivo was used to identify common themes (nodes) as they related to (1) patient-, provider-, task-, and environmental-barriers to homework implementation, (2) suggestions for m Health solutions to homework barriers, and (3) benefits and challenges associated with m Health homework solutions. Initial and secondary coding passes were conducted to identify and refine theme classifications as they emerged and impose a data-derived hierarchy to the nodes identified. Focused coding was used to refine the coding and ensure that data were coded completely with minimal redundancy ( Miles & Huberman, 1994 ). Themes were initially proposed by the first author and reviewed by an expert in qualitative and mixed methods research (the second author) and an internationally recognized expert in the implementation of homework and related barriers during CBT (the fourth author). Divergent perspectives on theme descriptions ( n =2) and classifications ( n =1) were compared until agreement was reached.

Results are organized by the main topics explored in this study, including: 1) barriers to the successful implementation of homework, coded on provider, patient, task, and environmental levels; 2) potential m Health solutions to those homework barriers; and 3) perceived benefits and challenges of those potential m Health solutions. Results within each of these topics are presented first from the perspectives of trainers and second from the perspectives of families.

Barriers to the Successful Implementation of Homework

Trainer perspectives..

As displayed in Table 3 , trainers identified several barriers to homework implementation on the provider-, patient-, task-, and environmental-level.

Trainer Perspectives on Homework Barriers

Provider-Level Barriers.

Many trainers felt that providers tend to have difficulty engaging patients in assigned tasks, leading some providers to become discouraged by low levels of engagement. As stated by one trainer,

“I think they recognize that [homework assignments] do have value, but in terms of what I feel, a lot of clinicians are not having success with families completing homework, so it’s diminishing the sense of value…something they’ve tried to put into place and they are not feeling there’s any success in it.”

Trainers also noted that many providers do not see homework as an integral part of therapy. One trainer commented,

“I think there are a lot of concrete barriers, but to me probably the biggest barrier will be the–I think that still to this day [providers] like to think that therapy happens in that one hour.”

Other interrelated difficulties faced by providers related to their capacity to effectively and consistently develop, assess, and assign meaningful and patient-centered homework exercises.

As stated by one trainer,

“I see a lot of that just shooting from the hip, kind of off the cuff, ‘let’s do this,’ but yet, it’s not backed by anything concrete or tangible…I think probably one of the biggest pieces again is the failure on the clinician’s part to follow that up and too often review it at the end of the session.”

Another said,

“I think clinicians don’t always appreciate how hard it is to actually do homework that requires you to make some behavioral change.”

Barriers also related to providers’ time and resources for implementing homework, as conveyed by one trainer’s comment,

“I mean, these people…every minute of every day is filled up with doing, billing, writing, charting, going to meetings, getting supervision, and seeing patients, and then they go home exhausted.”

Patient-Level Barriers.

Many trainers stated that, similar to some providers, patients often do not see homework as an important part of therapy. Put by one trainer,

“I think that some [patients] just feel that coming to the session is enough and that should resolve everything, and that you know, doing homework is just kind of an extra thing…I don’t really need to do it to benefit from the therapy.”

Perhaps relatedly, trainers also noted that patients generally forget to do homework assignments, and often forget why, how, when, and where assignments should be done.

Task-Level Barriers.

Task-level barriers noted by trainers included assignments not always aligning with patient values or treatment goals and that the term ‘homework’ being aversive to patients of all ages. One trainer commented,

“I think it has to be something that [patients] see the value in. And again, we go back to that engagement and them trusting you as well as you explaining to them why this could be helpful…If it didn’t help, we need to change it.”

Another trainer laughed while stating,

“when we use the word homework, we might as well just throw a stink bomb in the room.”

Environmental-Level Barriers.

Finally, on the environmental-level, many trainers suggested that patients’ home lives are busy and chaotic, leaving little-to-no time for homework.

Explained by one trainer,

“I think that for parents…they have many other things in their life; work, parenting, partnerships that they are working on, just day to day chores or things that they have to do in terms of their family or other responsibilities. So, [homework] often feels like, I think for families, to add another thing…it just feels like a lot.”

Associated barriers included limited caregiver involvement and reinforcement for completing homework assignments. One trainer commented,

“So, let’s not forget that the parents need to be encouraged and checked on to make sure the kid is doing it. They have to work at it – It’s not going to just happen. So, helping the parents to see that they’re going to need to work to make sure the kids do it, because again, the kids would rather eat ice-cream than do the work. I mean change is hard.”

Another stated,

“I would say, lack of reinforcement for homework, so maybe for getting what you assign for homework and not reviewing it or the kiddo or the family learning pretty quickly, you know, why do it, because there’s not a lot of support around it. You know, if [patients] don’t get reinforced, whether tangibly or verbally, they may not continue that.”

Family Perspectives.

Families identified several barriers to homework implementation on the patient-, task-, and environmental-level which were similar to many of those noted by national trainers (see Table 4 ).

Family Perspectives on Homework Barriers

Families believed that patients often avoid homework as a result of their symptoms. In other words, the patient’s unhelpful coping strategies are being triggered.

One caregiver commented,

“Sometimes people don’t even want to dig into their feelings even to do the assignment either, you know. It stirs up things. You know, when you’re dealing with feelings, sometimes you don’t want to experience that feeling…you shut down. You don’t want to feel that at that time.”

“When you already have a child that has ADHD or behavior problems, it’s hard to get them motivated and to get them to do these exercises at home.”

Families also felt that patients simply forget to complete homework or bring it to their next session. One child stated,

“That’s my problem, she’ll give me homework, we met once a week, basically, and I would forget it because I’ve got a lot going on, and when I come in and she’s like, ‘Did you do your homework,’ I’m like, ‘Oh man’.”

Similar to trainers, families felt that patients often forget why, how, when and where assignments should be done. As stated by one caregiver,

“I think sometimes it can also be just, like maybe not fully understanding what is being asked of them to do. I know the therapist will ask them in the office, ‘do you understand?’ and of course the kids always go, ‘yes I do, can I go home now’?”

With respect to task-level barriers, most families viewed homework assignments as boring. General consensus from families was that patients–particularly youth– would more often than not just rather be doing something more interesting.

On the environmental level, all families noted that the home-life of patients is busy and chaotic, leaving little perceived time for homework. Everyday responsibilities such as schoolwork, employment, household chores, and familial responsibilities often take precedence. One caregiver stated,

“Well I think it sounds good in the office and then you get home and you just get quite busy and it gets pushed aside.”

Another commented,

“But I know what he’s saying…sometimes seven-and-a-half hours at school and then sometimes his therapy would be an hour-and-a-half. And thank goodness, his teacher was so flexible that on days he has therapy he did not have homework [for school], but he was just so emotionally and physically drained. When he got home, all he wanted to do was just rest or play. Because that’s the therapy, it can be just exhausting.”

Families also believed that that there is often a lack of reinforcement for completing homework assignments.

m Health Solutions to Homework Barriers

Trainer suggestions..

Trainers provided several suggestions for m Health solutions to homework barriers ( Table 5 ). Most trainers felt that reminders and schedules to help patients remember to complete homework assignments would be a crucial feature. One trainer suggested, “Maybe some kind of reminder feature, something that would kind of record into their daily calendars that they use, or an alarm, or something like a daily reminder…set to the times they are most likely to do the homework.”

Trainer Suggestions for m Health Solutions to Homework Barriers

Trainers also suggested including reports or activity summaries of homework completion along with behavior and symptom tracking tools. One trainer thoughtfully commented, “If the homework app can somehow help to provide some data on the actual implementation of certain skills during the week that would be very valuable because I think the constructive feedback and the positive feedback that’s offered by therapists about performance of those skills between sessions can be really valuable.”

Trainers suggested including a variety of interactive, fun, and rewarding activities that engage children and caregivers. For example, one trainer stated,

“I think the more interactive you can make it between parent and child and the more of a game you can make it…kids are more likely to do that and to kind of use those skills.” All trainers ( n =21) felt that a text message-based system for reminding patients to complete homework assignments would be beneficial.

Family Suggestions.

Families suggested that the main function of the resource should serve to provide reminders (e.g., text messages or push notifications) for patients to complete homework assignments as well as instructions for how and when they should be completed. Another common suggestion was to include a reward system within the resource to reinforce engagement with homework assignments. Some suggestions for this reward system included coins, experience points, levels, and customizable avatar characters. One child thoughtfully related,

“there could be a digital reward system like stars or gems or something. Then it could be redeemed or something in the therapist’s office. Like I remember it was a while ago, I remember my therapist said if I was able to do something that I was having trouble with, we would have like brownies or something the next visit.”

Families also recommended that the resource include interactive and fun activities. The most common suggestion was to “gamify” homework assignments to make them more fun and interesting to patients. For example, a caregiver noted,

“I think that if you are able to play a game or level up after you did your activity…I don’t think you would have a problem with them doing the activity. They would be so excited to be able to play the game.”

Families providers also recommended reports and activity summaries so that progress could be tracked and reported to providers to be reviewed during the next treatment session ( Table 6 ). All families ( n =12) felt that a text message-based system for reminding patients to complete homework assignments would be beneficial.

Family Suggestions for m Health Solutions to Homework Barriers

Benefits and Challenges of m Health Solutions to Homework Barriers

The majority of trainers responded that an m Health solution to homework barriers would increase provider use of ( n =20; 95.2%) and family adherence to ( n =21; 100%) homework during mental health treatment. The majority of trainers also responded that such a resource would positively affect the therapeutic relationship ( n =15; 71.4%), increase treatment efficiency ( n =18; 85.7%), and improve treatment effectiveness ( n =18; 85.7%). Neutral responses were provided by all trainers who did not respond affirmatively to these questions (i.e., no negative responses were provided). Trainers also commented on the potential clinical utility of an m Health homework resource in that it would help providers with tracking and assigning homework and patients with skill development while promoting high levels of engagement in youth patients. Access, comfort with technology, and convenience were also noted benefits (See Table 7 ). One trainer commented,

Trainer Perspectives on Benefits and Challenges relating to m Health Solutions to Homework Barriers No. of Trainers

“I feel like so many people now enjoy so much more doing things on electronics and so definitely in sessions with kids I’m often recommending having a clinician use apps…sometimes technology is the way to really hook families in and engage them.”

“You know everybody has a phone and if we can have some apps where…I mean it’s so exciting to me what you are talking about. I can’t think of a better idea, I really can’t. I mean people always have their phones on them even if you are really, really poor, people tend to have a phone.”

Challenges identified by trainers centered around confidentiality, access and comfort with technology, and potential negative impacts on the therapeutic process. For example, one trainer stated,

“I do not know if people worry about if somebody else saw the app and wondered, ‘oh you are in therapy, oh what happened to you?’ So, some things around privacy issues and confidentiality, but those will be pretty easy to fix.”

The majority of families believed that the an m Health homework resource would make practicing therapy skills at home more fun or interesting ( n =11; 91.7%), would help families practice skills more often ( n =12; 100%), would positively affect the therapeutic relationship ( n =12; 100%), and would improve treatment effectiveness ( n =11; 91.7%). Neutral responses were provided by all families who did not respond affirmatively to these questions (i.e., no negative responses were provided). Families also suggested that an m Health homework resource would have excellent clinical utility, helping to improve communication between providers and families, make treatment and homework more rewarding, encourage more engagement from youth One caregiver commented,

“I think it would encourage the kids to get [homework] done even before the parents. The kids would want to do it on the phone, they love messing with phones.”

“I think by having the reminders, as well as having something there that’s interactive for the kids and the caregivers both. I think it would be a huge help.”

Similar to trainers, challenges noted by families related to confidentiality and some families not having access to the technology or the internet. Additional family perspectives on benefits and challenges are provided in Table 8 .

Family Perspectives on Benefits and Challenges relating to m Health Solutions to Homework Barriers

The aims of this study were to assess barriers to the successful implementation of homework during youth mental health treatment, obtain suggestions for m Health solutions to those barriers, and explore perceptions on the benefits and challenges associated with m Health solutions to homework barriers through semi-structured qualitative interviews with relevant stakeholders. National trainers in TF-CBT provided a unique perspective on the common challenges met by mental health providers and their patients as well as potential solutions to those challenges, particularly given their extensive experience problem-solving common clinical challenges with community mental health providers. Interviews with youth TF-CBT patients and their caregivers provided important perspectives from those most affected by homework barriers in mental health treatment.

Perspectives on Barriers to the Successful Implementation of Homework

Trainer and family perspectives on the various barriers to the successful implementation of homework during mental health treatment aligned well with the heuristic proposed by Kazantzis and Shinkfield (2007) , which classifies barriers as occurring on the provider-, patient-, task-, and environmental-levels. Most of the provider-level barriers noted by trainers were consistent with expert recommendations from the research literature, such as providers’ beliefs relating to homework and patient engagement in homework ( Coon et al., 2005 ; Friedberg & Mcclure, 2005 ; Garland & Scott, 2002 ), difficulty designing homework activities and individualizing them to specific patients ( Kazantzis & Shinkfield, 2007 ), forgetting about homework and running out of time during the session ( Friedberg & Mcclure, 2005 ), difficulty with consistency and not wanting to put too many demands on patients ( Coon et al., 2005 ), and difficulty effectively assessing patient barriers ( Kazantzis & Shinkfield, 2007 ). Experts have proposed a model for practice that directly addresses many of these provider-level barriers by proposing an ideal process for facilitating engagement in homework ( Kazantzis, MacEwan, & Dattilio, 2005 ).

Trainer and family perspectives on the most common patient-level homework barriers were similar and were also consistent with the extant literature. These included patients’ avoidance or symptoms ( Coon et al., 2005 ; Dattilio et al., 2011 ; Friedberg & Mcclure, 2005 ; Garland & Scott, 2002 ; Hudson & Kendall, 2005 ; Leahy, 2002 ), forgetting to complete assignments ( Coon et al., 2005 ; Hudson & Kendall, 2005 ), not understanding when, where, or how to do assignments or the rationale ( Dattilio et al., 2011 ; Friedberg & Mcclure, 2005 ; Garland & Scott, 2002 ), and beliefs about homework tasks and their ability to complete them ( Dattilio et al., 2011 ; Kazantzis & Shinkfield, 2007 ). Interestingly, whereas the most commonly endorsed patient-level barrier by trainers was patients not seeing homework as an integral part of therapy or important, the most commonly endorsed barriers by families included avoidance or symptoms, forgetfulness, and lack of understanding about assignments, reflecting differing views on the more significant barriers faced by patients. This discrepancy in the trainers/providers vs . families’ perspectives regarding between session assignments suggests the importance of therapists’ focusing more time on explaining assignments, discussing potential challenges, emphasizing the benefits of completing assignments in overcoming symptoms/difficulties and ultimately inspiring follow through.

Task-level barriers reported by both trainers and families included assignments not aligning with patient values or treatment goals ( Coon et al., 2005 ; Dattilio et al., 2011 ; Hudson & Kendall, 2005 ). Many trainers reported that the word “homework” is an aversive term to patients, particularly to youth patients. Perhaps relatedly, many families reported that children view homework assignments are boring. Negative associations with homework may be addressed by referring to “homework” as practice assignments, experiments, exercises, or action plans, as recommended by a recent Beck Institute blog post by Drs. Judith Beck and Francine Broder ( Beck & Broder, 2016 ).

Finally, environment-level barriers noted by trainers and families included the home lives of patients being busy and chaotic – leaving little time to complete homework assignments; a lack of caregiver involvement in the case of youth; and a lack of reward or reinforcement for completing homework assignments, all of which have been previously noted ( Bru et al., 2013 ; Coon et al., 2005 ; Dattilio et al., 2011 ; Kazantzis & Shinkfield, 2007 ). In sum, trainer and family perspectives on barriers to the successful implementation of homework were largely consistent with those suggested by experts. Further, there was a general agreement between trainers and families with respect to those barriers. It is important to note the interrelatedness of several barriers within various levels. For example, patients not understanding the importance of homework or seeing it as an integral part of therapy could very much reflect a mismatch in alliance, tasks needed to achieve therapy goals, or a poor therapist rationale and opportunity for client feedback and discussion. Further, a patient’s understanding of the rationale for homework might be dependent on the provider’s skill in its explanation.

Trainers and families provided numerous suggestions for m Health solutions to homework barriers. These functionality and content suggestions included: reminders and schedules to overcome barriers to forgetting; behavior and symptom tracking and reports or activity summaries to assist providers in assessing homework completion; a variety of homework activities to choose from to help providers struggling with developing activities; resources for caregivers to improve caregiver support; and an integrated reward system to make completing homework rewarding and reinforcing for patients. Other suggested features related more to user interface and user experience. For example, interviewees felt that the m Health resource should allow easy navigation to relevant resources; include clear instructions via video, text, and audio to help patients understand and remember how to do assignments; include interactive and fun activities to help make the assignments less boring and less like “homework;” and be patient-centered and developmentally appropriate. Trainers and families also felt that a text message-based system for reminding patients to complete homework assignments would be beneficial, indicating that this approach would provide a good alternative to a purely app-based resource.

As outlined in recent reviews, there are several studies on m Health resources that include the functionality and content features suggested in this study and can also be used to facilitate homework implementation ( Bakker et al., 2016 ; Tang & Kreindler, 2017 ). For example, a number of m Health resources can be used for self-monitoring and symptom tracking, and many have engaging activities that can be used to support between-session learning and skill development in the areas of relaxation, cognitive therapy, imaginal exposure, and parent behavioral management ( Bunnell et al., 2019 ; Jungbluth & Shirk, 2013 ; Kristjánsdóttir et al., 2013 ; Newman, Przeworski, Consoli, & Barr Taylor, 2014 ; Reger et al., 2013 ; Shapiro et al., 2010 ; Whiteside, Ale, Vickers Douglas, Tiede, & Dammann, 2014 ). SMS- and app-based reminders and feedback on progress can also be used to encourage continued engagement in skills practice ( Aguilera & Muñoz, 2011 ; Harrison et al., 2011 ; Reger et al., 2013 ; Wiederhold, Boyd, Sulea, Gaggioli, & Riva, 2014 ). However, as stated previously, most of these resources were not designed with the express intention of addressing barriers to homework implementation, particularly for youth and family patient populations, leaving room for future work in this area.

Trainers and families expressed very positive views on m Health solutions to homework barriers. Trainers felt that m Health would increase provider use and family adherence to homework, positively affect the therapeutic relationship, and increase treatment efficiency and effectiveness. Families felt that it would make practicing therapy skills at home more fun or interesting, help families practice skills more often, positively affect the therapeutic relationship, and improve treatment effectiveness. A potential benefit commonly noted by trainers and families was a high likelihood that youth would engage with the resource given their generally strong interest in technology, and that this would help to reinforce the practice of skills learned during therapy. A particular benefit noted was increased access to helpful resources between-sessions. Trainers and families expressed concerns about issues relating to confidentiality. While they did not view this as a fatal flaw of the resource, they suggested implementing appropriate safeguards to protect patient privacy and clearly explaining data protection to encourage use.

Limitations

There are several limitations to this study. Regarding generalizability of results, the selection of trainers and families interviewed was based on experience with TF-CBT, a specific treatment protocol for childhood trauma. Although interview questions were kept general during interviews, referring to mental health treatment rather than solely to TF-CBT, the views expressed by interviewees may relate more to TF-CBT than other child mental health treatments. However, a strength of this research is that TF-CBT has a broad symptom focus (e.g., PTSD, anxiety, depression, anger, disruptive behavior) and includes treatment components used in numerous youth mental health treatments (e.g., psychoeducation, relaxation, cognitive coping, affective modulation, exposure), which suggests that results would be applicable to a range of child mental health treatments. Additionally, national trainers in TF-CBT have consistent exposure to working closely with community mental health providers and regularly help them to problem-solve common barriers in clinical practice. This added insight into difficulties experienced by numerous mental health providers rather than asking individual providers about their experience. This is a strength of this study but also a potential limitation as not directly measured, thus an assumption. The views of trainers may not be completely representative of the every-day challenges to homework implementation experienced by community mental health providers. Given the small samples size and lack of diversity, the results should be interpreted with caution as they may not reflect the experiences or views of therapists and patients who utilize homework across different treatment approaches, therapy settings, and populations.

With respect to interview questions and results, they tended to focus on barriers and challenges and provided less of an opportunity for trainers and family members to share factors that may have led to successes with homework assignments. Such information could also importantly support the development and presentation of m health solutions by therapists. Relatedly, families were asked about barriers faced by youth and caregivers, and not by providers, which would have provided interesting data on family perspectives on providers’ limitations. Although comfort with technology in general was assessed in youth and caregivers, it was not specified as comfort with m Health, and ratings were not collected from trainers. As such, a potential limitation of this study is that participants’ comfort specifically with mHealth was unknown. Furthermore, this study focused specifically on m Health without a comparison to other low-tech solutions, which might have resulted in inflated levels of interest in m health solutions to homework barriers. A final limitation is that interviews were coded by the first author, and there is potential for variability in coding that was not accounted for (i.e., the same themes might have been classified in different ways). Despite this limitation, themes were reviewed and by an internationally recognized expert in the implementation of homework and related barriers during CBT (the fourth author) and compared until agreement was reached, supporting the derived themes.

Conclusions

This study provides important new information on barriers to the successful implementation of homework during youth mental health treatment, based on perspectives of providers, youth, and caregivers with that treatment experience. This study adds to the literature on these barriers, which has been based largely on recommendations from experts in the field. The results of this study aligned well with this literature, providing additional support for these recommendations. Valuable insights on potential m Health solutions to these homework barriers were also provided. These data are being used to inform the development of an m Health resource that aims to address homework barriers in hopes of improving provider use and patient adherence to homework during youth mental health treatment, with the ultimate goal of improving the quality of care received by patients in community mental health settings.

Supplementary Material

10608_2020_10090_moesm1_esm, acknowledgments.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Funding. Dr. Bunnell was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health (grant numbers F32 MH108250 and K23 MH118482).

Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest

Conflict of Interest. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Research Involving Human Participants and/or Animals

Statement of Human Rights.

Ethics approval. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the Institutional Review Board at the Medical University of South Carolina (Pro00047774) and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Statement on the Welfare of Animals

Ethical approval. This article does not contain any studies with animals performed by any of the authors.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

• Aguilera A, & Muñoz RF. (2011). Text messaging as an adjunct to CBT in low-income populations: A usability and feasibility pilot study . Professional Psychology: Research and Practice , 42 ( 6 ), 472–478. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Amstadter AB, Broman-Fulks J, Zinzow H, Ruggiero KJ, & Cercone J. (2009). Internet-based interventions for traumatic stress-related mental health problems: A review and suggestion for future research . Clinical Psychology Review , 29 ( 5 ), 410–420. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Bakker D, Kazantzis N, Rickwood D, & Rickard N. (2016). Mental health smartphone apps: Review and evidence-based recommendations for future developments . JMIR Mental Health , 3 ( 1 ), e7. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Beck JS, & Broder FR. (2016). The new “Homework” in cognitive behavior therapy . Beck Institute for Cognitive Behavior Therapy . Retrieved November 24, 2019, from https://beckinstitute.org/the-new-homework-in-cognitive-behavior-therapy/ [ Google Scholar ]
• Berkovits MD, O’Brien KA, Carter CG, & Eyberg SM. (2010). Early identification and intervention for behavior problems in primary care: A comparison of two abbreviated versions of parent-child interaction therapy . Behavior Therapy , 41 ( 3 ), 375–387. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Boschen MJ, & Casey LM. (2008). The use of mobile telephones as adjuncts to cognitive behavioral psychotherapy . Professional Psychology: Research and Practice , 39 ( 5 ), 546–552. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bru L, Solholm R, & Idsoe T. (2013). Participants’ experiences of an early cognitive behavioral intervention for adolescents with symptoms of depression . Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties , 18 ( 1 ), 24–43. [ Google Scholar ]
• Bunnell BE, Davidson TM, Winkelmann JR, Maples-Keller JL, Ridings LE, Dahne J, … Ruggiero KJ. (2019). Implementation and utility of an automated text messaging system to facilitate symptom self-monitoring and identify risk for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression in trauma center patients . Telemedicine and E-Health . [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Callan JA, Dunbar-Jacob J, Sereika SM, Stone C, Fasiczka A, Jarrett RB, & Thase ME. (2012). Barriers to cognitive behavioral therapy homework completion scaledepression version: Development and psychometric evaluation . International Journal of Cognitive Therapy , 5 ( 2 ), 219–235. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Charmaz K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis . New York, NY: SAGE Publications. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Clarke G, Hops H, Lewinsohn PM, Andrews J, Seeley JR, & Williams J. (1992). Cognitive-behavioral group treatment of adolescent depression: Prediction of outcome . Behavior Therapy , 23 ( 3 ), 341–354. [ Google Scholar ]
• Cohen JA, Mannarino AP, & Deblinger E. (2017). Treating trauma and traumatic grief in children and adolescents , 2nd ed. New York, NY, US: Guilford Press. [ Google Scholar ]
• Coon DW, Rabinowitz YG, Thompson LW, & Gallagher-Thompson D. (2005). Older adults. In Kazantzis N, Deane F, Ronan K, & L’Abate L. (Eds.), Using Homework Assignments in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (pp. 117–152). New York, NY: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Danko CM, Brown T, Van Schoick L, & Budd KS. (2016). Predictors and correlates of homework completion and treatment outcomes in parent–child interaction therapy . Child and Youth Care Forum , 45 ( 3 ), 467–485. [ Google Scholar ]
• Dattilio FM, Kazantzis N, Shinkfield G, & Carr AG. (2011). A survey of homework use, experience of barriers to homework, and attitudes about the barriers to homework among couples and family therapists . Journal of Marital and Family Therapy , 37 ( 2 ), 121–136. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Davidson TM, Bunnell BE, Saunders BE, Hanson RF, Danielson CK, Cook D, … Ruggiero KJ. (2019). Pilot evaluation of a tablet-based application to improve quality of care in child mental health treatment . Behavior Therapy , 50 ( 2 ), 367–379. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Deblinger E, Mannarino AP, Cohen JA, Runyon MK, & Steer RA. (2011). Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for children: Impact of the trauma narrative and treatment length . Depression and Anxiety , 28 ( 1 ), 67–75. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Deblinger E, Pollio E, & Dorsey S. (2016). Applying Trauma-Focused Cognitive–Behavioral Therapy in group format . Child Maltreatment , 21 ( 1 ), 59–73. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Donker T, Petrie K, Proudfoot J, Clarke J, Birch M-R, & Christensen H. (2013). Smartphones for smarter delivery of mental health programs: a systematic review . Journal of Medical Internet Research , 15 ( 11 ), e247. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ehrenreich B, Righter B, Rocke DA, Dixon L, & Himelhoch S. (2011). Are mobile phones and handheld computers being used to enhance delivery of psychiatric treatment ? The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease , 199 ( 11 ), 886–891. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Friedberg RD, & Mcclure JM. (2005). Adolescents. In Kazantzis N, Deane F, Ronan K, & L’Abate L. (Eds.), Using Homework Assignments in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (pp. 95–116). New York, NY: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Garland A, & Scott J. (2002). Using homework in therapy for depression . Journal of Clinical Psychology , 58 ( 5 ), 489–498. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Gaynor ST, Lawrence PS, & Nelson-Gray RO. (2006). Measuring homework compliance in cognitive-behavioral therapy for adolescent depression: Review, preliminary findings, and implications for theory and practice . Behavior Modification , 30 ( 5 ), 647–672. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hanson RF, Gros KS, Davidson TM, Barr S, Cohen J, Deblinger E, … Ruggiero KJ. (2014). National trainers’ perspectives on challenges to implementation of an empirically-supported mental health treatment . Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research , 41 ( 4 ), 522–534. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Harrison V, Proudfoot J, Wee PP, Parker G, Pavlovic DH, & Manicavasagar V. (2011, December). Mobile mental health: Review of the emerging field and proof of concept study . Journal of Mental Health . [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Helbig S, & Fehm L. (2004). Problems with homework in CBT: Rare exception or rather frequent? Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy , 32 ( 3 ), 291–301. [ Google Scholar ]
• Heron KE, & Smyth JM. (2010). Ecological momentary interventions: Incorporating mobile technology into psychosocial and health behaviour treatments . British Journal of Health Psychology , 15 ( 1 ), 1–39. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hudson JL, & Kendall PC. (2002). Showing you can do it: Homework in therapy for children and adolescents with anxiety disorders . Journal of Clinical Psychology , 58 ( 5 ), 525–534. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Hudson JL, & Kendall PC. (2005). Children. In Kazantzis N, Deane F, Ronan K, & L’Abate L. (Eds.), Using Homework Assignments in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (pp. 75–94). New York, NY: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Jungbluth NJ, & Shirk SR. (2013). Promoting homework adherence in cognitive-behavioral therapy for adolescent depression . Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology , 42 ( 4 ), 545–553. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis N, & Deane FP. (1999). Psychologists’ use of homework assignments in clinical practice . Professional Psychology: Research and Practice , 30 ( 6 ), 581–585. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis N, Deane FP, & Ronan KR. (2000). Homework assignments in cognitive and behavioral therapy: A meta-analysis . Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice , 7 ( 2 ), 189–202. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis N, Deane FP, & Ronan KR. (2004). Assessing compliance with homework assingments: Review and recommendations for clinical practice . Journal of Clinical Psychology , 60 ( 6 ), 627–641. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis N, Deane FP, Ronan KR, & L’Abate L. (2005). Using Homework Assignments in Cognitive Behavior Therapy . New York, NY: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis N, & Lampropoulos GK. (2002). Reflecting on homework in psychotherapy: What can we conclude from research and experience? Journal of Clinical Psychology , 58 ( 5 ), 577–585. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis N, Lampropoulos GK, & Deane FP. (2005). A national survey of practicing psychologists’ use and attitudes toward homework in psychotherapy . Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology , 73 ( 4 ), 742–748. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis N, MacEwan J, & Dattilio F. (2005). A guiding model for practice. In Kazantzis N, Deane F, Ronan K, & L’Abate L. (Eds.), Using Homework Assignments in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (pp. 359–407). New York: Routledge. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis Nikolaos, & Shinkfield G. (2007). Conceptualizing patient barriers to nonadherence with homework assignments . Cognitive and Behavioral Practice , 14 ( 3 ), 317–324. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis Nikolaos, Whittington C, & Dattilio F. (2010). Meta-analysis of homework effects in cognitive and behavioral therapy: A replication and extension. Clinical Psychology : Science and Practice , 17 ( 2 ), 144–156. [ Google Scholar ]
• Kazantzis Nikolaos, Whittington C, Zelencich L, Kyrios M, Norton PJ, & Hofmann SG. (2016). Quantity and quality of homework compliance: A meta-analysis of relations with outcome in cognitive behavior therapy . Behavior Therapy , 47 ( 5 ), 755–772. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Krebs P, & Duncan DT. (2015). Health app use among US mobile phone owners: A national survey . JMIR MHealth and UHealth , 3 ( 4 ), e101. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Kristjánsdóttir ÓB, Fors EA, Eide E, Finset A, Stensrud TL, Van Dulmen S, … Eide H. (2013). A smartphone-based intervention with diaries and therapist-feedback to reduce catastrophizing and increase functioning in women with chronic widespread pain: Randomized controlled trial . Journal of Medical Internet Research , 15 ( 1 ), e5. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Leahy RL. (2002). Improving homework compliance in the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder . Journal of Clinical Psychology , 58 ( 5 ), 499–511. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Luxton DD, McCann RA, Bush NE, Mishkind MC, & Reger GM. (2011). MHealth for mental health: Integrating smartphone technology in behavioral healthcare. Professional Psychology : Research and Practice , 42 ( 6 ), 505–512. [ Google Scholar ]
• Lyon AR, & Budd KS. (2010). A community mental health implementation of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) . Journal of Child and Family Studies , 19 ( 5 ), 654–668. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Mausbach BT, Moore R, Roesch S, Cardenas V, & Patterson TL. (2010). The relationship between homework compliance and therapy outcomes: An updated meta-analysis . Cognitive Therapy and Research , 34 ( 5 ), 429–438. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Miles MB, & Huberman AM. (1994). Qualitative data analysis: An expanded sourcebook . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. [ Google Scholar ]
• Morse JM. (2000). Determining sample size . Qualitative Health Research , 10 ( 1 ), 3–5. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Newman MG, Przeworski A, Consoli AJ, & Barr Taylor C. (2014). A randomized controlled trial of ecological momentary intervention plus brief group therapy for generalized anxiety disorder . Psychotherapy , 51 ( 2 ), 198–206. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Reger GM, Hoffman J, Riggs D, Rothbaum BO, Ruzek J, Holloway KM, & Kuhn E. (2013). The “PE coach” smartphone application: An innovative approach to improving implementation, fidelity, and homework adherence during prolonged exposure . Psychological Services , 10 ( 3 ), 342–349. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Ruggiero KJ, Saunders BE, Davidson TM, Cook DL, & Hanson R. (2017). Leveraging technology to address the quality chasm in children’s evidence-based psychotherapy . Psychiatric Services , 68 , 650–652. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Scheel MJ, Hanson WE, & Razzhavaikina TI. (2004). The process of recommending homework in psychotherapy: A review of therapist delivery methods, client acceptability, and factors that affect compliance . Psychotherapy , 41 ( 1 ), 38–55. [ Google Scholar ]
• Scheeringa MS, Weems CF, Cohen JA, Amaya-Jackson L, & Guthrie D. (2011). Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy for posttraumatic stress disorder in threethrough six year-old children: a randomized clinical trial . Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry , 52 ( 8 ), 853–860. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Shapiro JR, Bauer S, Andrews E, Pisetsky E, Bulik-Sullivan B, Hamer RM, & Bulik CM. (2010). Mobile therapy: Use of text-messaging in the treatment of bulimia nervosa . International Journal of Eating Disorders , 43 ( 6 ), 513–519. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Silverman WK, Ortiz CD, Viswesvaran C, Burns BJ, Kolko DJ, Putnam FW, & Amaya-Jackson L. (2008). Evidence-based psychosocial treatments for children and adolescents exposed to traumatic events . Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology , 37 ( 1 ), 156–183. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Simons AD, Marti CN, Rohde P, Lewis CC, Curry J, & March J. (2012). Does homework “matter” in cognitive behavioral therapy for adolescent depression? Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy , 26 ( 4 ), 390–404. [ Google Scholar ]
• Sukhodolsky DG, Kassinove H, & Gorman BS. (2004). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for anger in children and adolescents: A meta-analysis . Aggression and Violent Behavior , 9 ( 3 ), 247–269. [ Google Scholar ]
• Tang W, & Kreindler D. (2017). Supporting homework compliance in cognitive behavioural therapy: essential features of mobile apps . JMIR Mental Health , 4 ( 2 ), e20. [ PMC free article ] [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wethington HR, Hahn RA, Fuqua-Whitley DS, Sipe TA, Crosby AE, Johnson RL, … Task Force on Community Preventive Services. (2008). The effectiveness of interventions to reduce psychological harm from traumatic events among children and adolescents . American Journal of Preventive Medicine , 35 ( 3 ), 287–313. 10.1016/j.amepre.2008.06.024 [ PubMed ] [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Whiteside SPH, Ale CM, Vickers Douglas K, Tiede MS, & Dammann JE. (2014). Case examples of enhancing pediatric ocd treatment with a smartphone application . Clinical Case Studies , 13 ( 1 ), 80–94. 10.1177/1534650113504822 [ CrossRef ] [ Google Scholar ]
• Wiederhold BK, Boyd C, Sulea C, Gaggioli A, & Riva G. (2014). Marketing analysis of a positive technology app for the self-management of psychological stress . Studies in Health Technology and Informatics , 199 , 83–87. [ PubMed ] [ Google Scholar ]

Opinion | Social-Emotional Learning

If we’re serious about student well-being, we must change the systems students learn in, here are five steps high schools can take to support students' mental health., by tim klein and belle liang     oct 14, 2022.

Shutterstock / SvetaZi

Educators and parents started this school year with bated breath. Last year’s stress led to record levels of teacher burnout and mental health challenges for students.

Even before the pandemic, a mental health crisis among high schoolers loomed. According to a survey administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2019, 37 percent of high school students said they experienced persistent sadness or hopelessness and 19 percent reported suicidality. In response, more than half of all U.S. states mandated that schools have a mental health curriculum or include mental health in their standards .

As mental health professionals and co-authors of a book about the pressure and stress facing high school students, we’ve spent our entire careers supporting students’ mental health. Traditionally, mental health interventions are individualized and they focus on helping students manage and change their behaviors to cope with challenges they’re facing. But while working with schools and colleges across the globe as we conducted research for our book , we realized that most interventions don’t address systemic issues causing mental health problems in the first place.

It’s time we acknowledge that our education systems are directly contributing to the youth mental health crisis. And if we are serious about student well-being, we must change the systems they learn in.

Here are five bold steps that high schools can take to boost mental health.

Limit Homework or Make it Optional

Imagine applying for a job, and the hiring manager informs you that in addition to a full workday in the office, you’ll be assigned three more hours of work every night. Does this sound like a healthy work-life balance? Most adults would consider this expectation ridiculous and unsustainable. Yet, this is the workload most schools place on high school students.

Research shows that excessive homework leads to increased stress, physical health problems and a lack of balance in students' lives. And studies have shown that more than two hours of daily homework can be counterproductive , yet many teachers assign more.

Homework proponents argue that homework improves academic performance. Indeed, a meta-analysis of research on this issue found a correlation between homework and achievement. But correlation isn’t causation. Does homework cause achievement or do high achievers do more homework? While it’s likely that homework completion signals student engagement, which in turn leads to academic achievement, there’s little evidence to suggest that homework itself improves engagement in learning.

Another common argument is that homework helps students develop skills related to problem-solving, time-management and self-direction. But these skills can be explicitly taught during the school day rather than after school.

Limiting homework or moving to an optional homework policy not only supports student well-being, but it can also create a more equitable learning environment. According to the American Psychological Association, students from more affluent families are more likely to have access to resources such as devices, internet, dedicated work space and the support necessary to complete their work successfully—and homework can highlight those inequities .

Whether a school limits homework or makes it optional, it’s critical to remember that more important than the amount of homework assigned, is designing the type of activities that engage students in learning. When students are intrinsically motivated to do their homework, they are more engaged in the work, which in turn is associated with academic achievement.

Cap the Number of APs Students Can Take

Advanced Placement courses give students a taste of college-level work and, in theory, allow them to earn college credits early. Getting good grades on AP exams is associated with higher GPAs in high school and success in college, but the research tends to be correlational rather than causational.

In 2008, a little over 180,000 students took three or more AP exams. By 2018, that number had ballooned to almost 350,000 students .

However, this expansion has come at the expense of student well-being.

Over the years, we’ve heard many students express that they feel pressure to take as many AP classes as possible, which overloads them with work. That’s troubling because studies show that students who take AP classes and exams are twice as likely to report adverse physical and emotional health .

AP courses and exams also raise complex issues of equity. In 2019, two out of three Harvard freshmen reported taking AP Calculus in high school, according to Jeff Selingo, author of “ Who Gets In and Why: A Year Inside College Admissions ,” yet only half of all high schools in the country offer the course. And opportunity gaps exist for advanced coursework such as AP courses and dual enrollment, with inequitable distribution of funding and support impacting which students are enrolling and experiencing success. According to the Center for American Progress, “National data from the Civil Rights Data Collection show that students who are Black, Indigenous, and other non-Black people of color (BIPOC) are not enrolled in AP courses at rates comparable to their white and Asian peers and experience less success when they are—and the analysis for this report finds this to be true even when they attend schools with similar levels of AP course availability.”

Limiting the number of AP courses students take can protect mental health and create a more equitable experience for students.

Eliminate Class Rankings

In a study we conducted about mental health problems among high school girls, we found that a primary driver of stress was their perception of school as a hypercompetitive, zero-sum game where pervasive peer pressure to perform reigns supreme.

Class rankings fuel these cutthroat environments. They send a toxic message to young people: success requires doing better than your peers.

Ranking systems help highly selective colleges decide which students to admit or reject for admission. The purpose of high school is to develop students to their own full potential, rather than causing them to fixate on measuring up to others. Research shows that ranking systems undercut students’ learning and damage social relationships by turning peers into opponents.

Eliminating class rankings sends a powerful message to students that they are more than a number.

Become an Admission Test Objector

COVID-19 ushered in the era of test-optional admissions. De-centering standardized tests in the college application process is unequivocally a good thing. Standardized tests don’t predict student success in college , they only widen the achievement gap between privileged and underprivileged students and damage students' mental health .

Going “test optional” is an excellent first step, but it's not enough.

Even as more colleges have made tests optional, affluent students submit test scores at a higher rate than their lower-income peers and are admitted at higher rates , suggesting that testing still gives them an edge.

High schools must adhere to standardized test mandates, but they don’t have to endorse them. They can become test objectors by publicly proclaiming that these tests hold no inherent value. They can stop teaching to the test and educate parents on why they are doing so. Counseling departments can inform colleges that their school is a test objector so admission teams won’t penalize students.

Of course, students and families will still find ways to wield these tests as a competitive advantage. Over time, the more schools and educators unite to denounce these tests, the less power they will hold over students and families.

Big change starts with small steps.

Stand For What You Value

Critics may argue that such policies might hurt student outcomes. How will colleges evaluate school rigor if we limit AP courses and homework? How will students demonstrate their merits without class rankings and standardized test scores?

The truth is, the best school systems in the world succeed without homework, standardized test scores or an obsession with rigorous courses. And many U.S. schools have found creative and empowering ways to showcase student merit beyond rankings and test scores.

If we aren’t willing to change policies and practices that have been shown to harm students’ well-being, we have to ask ourselves: Do we really value mental health?

Thankfully, it doesn’t have to be an either/or scenario: We can design school systems that help students thrive academically and psychologically.

Belle Liang and Tim Klein are mental health professionals and co-authors of “How To Navigate Life: The New Science of Finding Your Way in School, Career and Life.”

More from EdSurge

Most Students Think History Is Boring. Here's How We Change That.

By alex brouhard.

Unlocking the Power of Creativity and AI: Preparing Students for the Future Workforce

By abbie misha.

Diversity and Equity

Researchers have identified the starkest cases of school district segregation, by nadia tamez-robledo.

5 Steps to Ensure Your Classroom Technology Refresh Delivers

By natalie mactier.

Journalism that ignites your curiosity about education.

EdSurge is an editorially independent project of and

• Product Index
• Write for us
• Advertising

FOLLOW EDSURGE

© 2024 All Rights Reserved

When Is Homework Stressful? Its Effects on Students’ Mental Health

Are you wondering when is homework stressful? Well, homework is a vital constituent in keeping students attentive to the course covered in a class. By applying the lessons, students learned in class, they can gain a mastery of the material by reflecting on it in greater detail and applying what they learned through homework. 

However, students get advantages from homework, as it improves soft skills like organisation and time management which are important after high school. However, the additional work usually causes anxiety for both the parents and the child. As their load of homework accumulates, some students may find themselves growing more and more bored.

Students may take assistance online and ask someone to do my online homework . As there are many platforms available for the students such as Chegg, Scholarly Help, and Quizlet offering academic services that can assist students in completing their homework on time. 

Negative impact of homework

There are the following reasons why is homework stressful and leads to depression for students and affect their mental health. As they work hard on their assignments for alarmingly long periods, students’ mental health is repeatedly put at risk. Here are some serious arguments against too much homework.

No uniqueness

Homework should be intended to encourage children to express themselves more creatively. Teachers must assign kids intriguing assignments that highlight their uniqueness. similar to writing an essay on a topic they enjoy.

Moreover, the key is encouraging the child instead of criticizing him for writing a poor essay so that he can express himself more creatively.

Lack of sleep

One of the most prevalent adverse effects of schoolwork is lack of sleep. The average student only gets about 5 hours of sleep per night since they stay up late to complete their homework, even though the body needs at least 7 hours of sleep every day. Lack of sleep has an impact on both mental and physical health.

No pleasure

Students learn more effectively while they are having fun. They typically learn things more quickly when their minds are not clouded by fear. However, the fear factor that most teachers introduce into homework causes kids to turn to unethical means of completing their assignments.

Excessive homework

The lack of coordination between teachers in the existing educational system is a concern. As a result, teachers frequently end up assigning children far more work than they can handle. In such circumstances, children turn to cheat on their schoolwork by either copying their friends’ work or using online resources that assist with homework.

Anxiety level

Homework stress can increase anxiety levels and that could hurt the blood pressure norms in young people . Do you know? Around 3.5% of young people in the USA have high blood pressure. So why is homework stressful for children when homework is meant to be enjoyable and something they look forward to doing? It is simple to reject this claim by asserting that schoolwork is never enjoyable, yet with some careful consideration and preparation, homework may become pleasurable.

No time for personal matters

Students that have an excessive amount of homework miss out on personal time. They can’t get enough enjoyment. There is little time left over for hobbies, interpersonal interaction with colleagues, and other activities. 

However, many students dislike doing their assignments since they don’t have enough time. As they grow to detest it, they can stop learning. In any case, it has a significant negative impact on their mental health.

Children are no different than everyone else in need of a break. Weekends with no homework should be considered by schools so that kids have time to unwind and prepare for the coming week. Without a break, doing homework all week long might be stressful.

How do parents help kids with homework?

Encouraging children’s well-being and health begins with parents being involved in their children’s lives. By taking part in their homework routine, you can see any issues your child may be having and offer them the necessary support.

Set up a routine

Your student will develop and maintain good study habits if you have a clear and organized homework regimen. If there is still a lot of schoolwork to finish, try putting a time limit. Students must obtain regular, good sleep every single night.

Observe carefully

The student is ultimately responsible for their homework. Because of this, parents should only focus on ensuring that their children are on track with their assignments and leave it to the teacher to determine what skills the students have and have not learned in class.

Listen to your child

One of the nicest things a parent can do for their kids is to ask open-ended questions and listen to their responses. Many kids are reluctant to acknowledge they are struggling with their homework because they fear being labelled as failures or lazy if they do.

However, every parent wants their child to succeed to the best of their ability, but it’s crucial to be prepared to ease the pressure if your child starts to show signs of being overburdened with homework.

Talk to your teachers

Also, make sure to contact the teacher with any problems regarding your homework by phone or email. Additionally, it demonstrates to your student that you and their teacher are working together to further their education.

Homework with friends

If you are still thinking is homework stressful then It’s better to do homework with buddies because it gives them these advantages. Their stress is reduced by collaborating, interacting, and sharing with peers.

Additionally, students are more relaxed when they work on homework with pals. It makes even having too much homework manageable by ensuring they receive the support they require when working on the assignment. Additionally, it improves their communication abilities.

However, doing homework with friends guarantees that one learns how to communicate well and express themselves. 

Review homework plan

Create a schedule for finishing schoolwork on time with your child. Every few weeks, review the strategy and make any necessary adjustments. Gratefully, more schools are making an effort to control the quantity of homework assigned to children to lessen the stress this produces.

Bottom line

Finally, be aware that homework-related stress is fairly prevalent and is likely to occasionally affect you or your student. Sometimes all you or your kid needs to calm down and get back on track is a brief moment of comfort. So if you are a student and wondering if is homework stressful then you must go through this blog.

While homework is a crucial component of a student’s education, when kids are overwhelmed by the amount of work they have to perform, the advantages of homework can be lost and grades can suffer. Finding a balance that ensures students understand the material covered in class without becoming overburdened is therefore essential.

Zuella Montemayor did her degree in psychology at the University of Toronto. She is interested in mental health, wellness, and lifestyle.

Psychreg is a digital media company and not a clinical company. Our content does not constitute a medical or psychological consultation. See a certified medical or mental health professional for diagnosis.

• Privacy Policy

© Copyright 2014–2034 Psychreg Ltd

• PSYCHREG JOURNAL
• MEET OUR WRITERS
• MEET THE TEAM

Homework and Mental Health: Striking the Right Balance

In today’s fast-paced and competitive education landscape, students are often faced with overwhelming academic expectations that can significantly impact their mental health. The pressure to excel academically, coupled with the demands of homework, can lead to excessive stress, anxiety, and burnout. It is crucial to find the right balance between academic responsibilities and mental well-being to ensure that students thrive both academically and emotionally.

In this comprehensive guide, we will delve into the research surrounding homework and its effects on students’ stress levels and mental health. We will explore the link between homework and stress, examine the impact of excessive homework on students’ well-being, and, for those seeking relief, offer practical strategies to manage homework effectively or find support to do my homework for me . These insights are intended to help students, parents, and educators strike a balance that promotes both academic success and mental well-being.

The Link Between Homework and Stress

Numerous studies have investigated the relationship between homework and stress levels in students. One notable study conducted by Stanford lecturer Denise Pope found that students who reported spending more than two hours per night on homework experienced higher stress levels and physical health issues. This research highlighted the potential negative effects of excessive homework on students’ well-being.

Another study published in the Sleep Health Journal found that long hours of homework may be a risk factor for depression. This research suggests that reducing homework workload outside of class may benefit sleep quality and mental fitness. Additionally, a study presented by Frontiers in Psychology emphasized the significant health implications for high school students facing chronic stress, including emotional exhaustion and substance use.

These studies collectively indicate that excessive homework can contribute to increased stress levels among students, potentially leading to a range of negative psychological and physiological effects. It is crucial for educators and parents to be mindful of the workload they assign to students and prioritize their well-being.

The Impact of Homework on Mental Health and Well-being

Excessive homework can have far-reaching effects on students’ mental health and well-being. Understanding these effects is essential for developing strategies to mitigate the potential negative consequences. Let’s examine the psychological and physical effects of homework-induced stress on students:

Psychological Effects of Homework-Induced Stress

• Anxiety: The pressure to perform academically and meet homework expectations can lead to heightened levels of anxiety in students. Constant worry about completing assignments on time and achieving high grades can be overwhelming.
• Sleep Disturbances: Homework-related stress can disrupt students’ sleep patterns, leading to sleep anxiety or sleep deprivation. Lack of quality sleep negatively impacts cognitive function and emotional regulation.
• Reduced Motivation: Excessive homework demands can drain students’ motivation, causing them to feel fatigued and disengaged from their studies. Reduced motivation may lead to a lack of interest in learning, hindering overall academic performance.

Physical Effects of Homework-Induced Stress

• Impaired Immune Function: Prolonged stress from overwhelming homework loads can weaken the immune system, making students more susceptible to illnesses and infections.
• Disrupted Hormonal Balance: Chronic stress triggers the release of hormones like cortisol, which can disrupt the delicate hormonal balance and lead to various health issues.
• Gastrointestinal Disturbances: Stress affects the gastrointestinal system, resulting in symptoms such as stomachaches, nausea, and other digestive problems.
• Cardiovascular Impact: The increased heart rate and elevated blood pressure associated with stress can strain the cardiovascular system, potentially increasing the risk of heart-related issues in the long run.
• Brain Impact: Prolonged exposure to stress hormones may impact the brain’s functioning, affecting memory, concentration, and cognitive abilities.

It is evident that excessive homework can have detrimental effects on students’ mental and physical well-being. Balancing academic responsibilities with self-care and mental health is crucial for fostering a healthy and productive learning environment.

The Benefits of Homework

While the potential negative effects of excessive homework cannot be ignored, it is essential to recognize that homework also offers several benefits that contribute to students’ academic growth and development. Some of these benefits include:

• Development of Time Management Skills: Completing homework within specified deadlines encourages students to manage their time efficiently. This skill extends beyond academics and becomes essential in various aspects of life.
• Preparation for Future Challenges: Homework helps prepare students for future academic challenges and responsibilities. It fosters a sense of discipline and responsibility, qualities crucial for success in higher education and professional life.
• Enhanced Problem-Solving Abilities: Homework often presents students with challenging problems to solve. Tackling these problems independently nurtures critical thinking and problem-solving skills.

While acknowledging these benefits, it is crucial to strike a balance between assigning meaningful homework and ensuring students’ overall well-being.

Striking the Right Balance: Strategies for Students, Parents, and Educators

Finding a balance between academic responsibilities and mental well-being is crucial for students’ overall success and happiness. Here are some practical strategies that students, parents, and educators can implement to strike the right balance:

For Students:

Effective Time Management: Create a structured study schedule that allocates sufficient time for homework, breaks, and other activities. Prioritize tasks and set realistic goals to prevent last-minute rushes and reduce feelings of overwhelm.

Break Tasks into Smaller Chunks: Large assignments can be daunting and contribute to stress. Break them into smaller, manageable parts. This approach makes the workload seem less intimidating and provides a sense of accomplishment as each section is completed.

Designate a Distraction-Free Zone: Establish a designated study area that is free from distractions like smartphones, television, or social media. This setting improves focus and productivity, reducing the time needed to complete homework.

Engage in Physical Activity: Regular exercise is known to reduce stress and enhance mood. Incorporate physical activity into your daily routine, whether it’s going for a walk, playing a sport, or practicing yoga.

Practice Relaxation Techniques: Engage in mindfulness practices such as deep breathing exercises or meditation to alleviate stress and improve concentration. Taking short breaks to relax and clear the mind enhances overall well-being and cognitive performance.

Seek Support: Reach out to teachers, parents, or school counselors when feeling overwhelmed or in need of assistance. Establish an open and supportive environment where you feel comfortable expressing concerns and seeking help.

For Parents:

Foster Open Communication: Create an environment where your child feels comfortable discussing their academic challenges and stressors. Encourage open communication about workload and provide support and guidance when needed.

Set Realistic Expectations: Recognize that each child is unique and has different capacities for handling academic pressures. Set realistic expectations for homework completion, considering their individual needs and responsibilities.

Encourage Healthy Habits: Promote a balanced lifestyle that includes sufficient sleep, physical activity, and relaxation. Encourage breaks and downtime to prevent burnout.

Collaborate with Educators: Maintain open lines of communication with teachers to stay informed about the workload and address any concerns regarding excessive homework. Advocate for a balanced approach to homework.

For Educators:

Assign Purposeful Homework: Ensure that homework assignments are purposeful, relevant, and targeted towards specific learning objectives. Emphasize quality over quantity and avoid assigning excessive workloads.

Provide Clear Instructions: Clearly communicate assignment expectations and deadlines to students. This clarity helps students plan their time effectively and reduces stress related to uncertainty.

Offer Support and Resources: Provide students with resources and support systems, such as study guides, online materials, or access to tutoring, to help them navigate their homework effectively.

Encourage Self-Care: Educate students about the importance of self-care and stress management. Incorporate discussions and activities related to mental health and well-being into the curriculum.

By implementing these strategies, students, parents, and educators can work collaboratively to strike a balance between academic responsibilities and mental well-being, fostering a positive learning environment that promotes both academic success and emotional well-being.

Finding the right balance between homework and mental health is crucial for students’ overall well-being and academic success. Excessive homework can lead to increased stress levels, negatively impacting students’ mental and physical health. By understanding the potential effects of homework-induced stress, implementing practical strategies, and fostering open communication between students, parents, and educators, we can create a supportive learning environment that prioritizes both academic growth and mental well-being. Let’s work together to ensure that students thrive academically and emotionally.

Related Posts

Athletes Using Hbot – Why Do Athletes Use Hbot?

Request More Info

Fill out the form below and a member of our team will reach out right away!

" * " indicates required fields

Is Homework Necessary? Education Inequity and Its Impact on Students

The Problem with Homework: It Highlights Inequalities

How much homework is too much homework, when does homework actually help, negative effects of homework for students, how teachers can help.

Schools are getting rid of homework from Essex, Mass., to Los Angeles, Calif. Although the no-homework trend may sound alarming, especially to parents dreaming of their child’s acceptance to Harvard, Stanford or Yale, there is mounting evidence that eliminating homework in grade school may actually have great benefits , especially with regard to educational equity.

In fact, while the push to eliminate homework may come as a surprise to many adults, the debate is not new . Parents and educators have been talking about this subject for the last century, so that the educational pendulum continues to swing back and forth between the need for homework and the need to eliminate homework.

One of the most pressing talking points around homework is how it disproportionately affects students from less affluent families. The American Psychological Association (APA) explained:

“Kids from wealthier homes are more likely to have resources such as computers, internet connections, dedicated areas to do schoolwork and parents who tend to be more educated and more available to help them with tricky assignments. Kids from disadvantaged homes are more likely to work at afterschool jobs, or to be home without supervision in the evenings while their parents work multiple jobs.”

[RELATED] How to Advance Your Career: A Guide for Educators >> 

While students growing up in more affluent areas are likely playing sports, participating in other recreational activities after school, or receiving additional tutoring, children in disadvantaged areas are more likely headed to work after school, taking care of siblings while their parents work or dealing with an unstable home life. Adding homework into the mix is one more thing to deal with — and if the student is struggling, the task of completing homework can be too much to consider at the end of an already long school day.

While all students may groan at the mention of homework, it may be more than just a nuisance for poor and disadvantaged children, instead becoming another burden to carry and contend with.

Beyond the logistical issues, homework can negatively impact physical health and stress — and once again this may be a more significant problem among economically disadvantaged youth who typically already have a higher stress level than peers from more financially stable families .

Yet, today, it is not just the disadvantaged who suffer from the stressors that homework inflicts. A 2014 CNN article, “Is Homework Making Your Child Sick?” , covered the issue of extreme pressure placed on children of the affluent. The article looked at the results of a study surveying more than 4,300 students from 10 high-performing public and private high schools in upper-middle-class California communities.

“Their findings were troubling: Research showed that excessive homework is associated with high stress levels, physical health problems and lack of balance in children’s lives; 56% of the students in the study cited homework as a primary stressor in their lives,” according to the CNN story. “That children growing up in poverty are at-risk for a number of ailments is both intuitive and well-supported by research. More difficult to believe is the growing consensus that children on the other end of the spectrum, children raised in affluence, may also be at risk.”

When it comes to health and stress it is clear that excessive homework, for children at both ends of the spectrum, can be damaging. Which begs the question, how much homework is too much?

The National Education Association and the National Parent Teacher Association recommend that students spend 10 minutes per grade level per night on homework . That means that first graders should spend 10 minutes on homework, second graders 20 minutes and so on. But a study published by The American Journal of Family Therapy found that students are getting much more than that.

While 10 minutes per day doesn’t sound like much, that quickly adds up to an hour per night by sixth grade. The National Center for Education Statistics found that high school students get an average of 6.8 hours of homework per week, a figure that is much too high according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It is also to be noted that this figure does not take into consideration the needs of underprivileged student populations.

In a study conducted by the OECD it was found that “after around four hours of homework per week, the additional time invested in homework has a negligible impact on performance .” That means that by asking our children to put in an hour or more per day of dedicated homework time, we are not only not helping them, but — according to the aforementioned studies — we are hurting them, both physically and emotionally.

What’s more is that homework is, as the name implies, to be completed at home, after a full day of learning that is typically six to seven hours long with breaks and lunch included. However, a study by the APA on how people develop expertise found that elite musicians, scientists and athletes do their most productive work for about only four hours per day. Similarly, companies like Tower Paddle Boards are experimenting with a five-hour workday, under the assumption that people are not able to be truly productive for much longer than that. CEO Stephan Aarstol told CNBC that he believes most Americans only get about two to three hours of work done in an eight-hour day.

In the scope of world history, homework is a fairly new construct in the U.S. Students of all ages have been receiving work to complete at home for centuries, but it was educational reformer Horace Mann who first brought the concept to America from Prussia. 

Since then, homework’s popularity has ebbed and flowed in the court of public opinion. In the 1930s, it was considered child labor (as, ironically, it compromised children’s ability to do chores at home). Then, in the 1950s, implementing mandatory homework was hailed as a way to ensure America’s youth were always one step ahead of Soviet children during the Cold War. Homework was formally mandated as a tool for boosting educational quality in 1986 by the U.S. Department of Education, and has remained in common practice ever since.  

School work assigned and completed outside of school hours is not without its benefits. Numerous studies have shown that regular homework has a hand in improving student performance and connecting students to their learning. When reviewing these studies, take them with a grain of salt; there are strong arguments for both sides, and only you will know which solution is best for your students or school. 

Homework improves student achievement.

• Source: The High School Journal, “ When is Homework Worth the Time?: Evaluating the Association between Homework and Achievement in High School Science and Math ,” 2012. 
• Source: IZA.org, “ Does High School Homework Increase Academic Achievement? ,” 2014. **Note: Study sample comprised only high school boys. 

Homework helps reinforce classroom learning.

• Source: “ Debunk This: People Remember 10 Percent of What They Read ,” 2015.

Homework helps students develop good study habits and life skills.

• Sources: The Repository @ St. Cloud State, “ Types of Homework and Their Effect on Student Achievement ,” 2017; Journal of Advanced Academics, “ Developing Self-Regulation Skills: The Important Role of Homework ,” 2011.
• Source: Journal of Advanced Academics, “ Developing Self-Regulation Skills: The Important Role of Homework ,” 2011.

Homework allows parents to be involved with their children’s learning.

• Parents can see what their children are learning and working on in school every day. 
• Parents can participate in their children’s learning by guiding them through homework assignments and reinforcing positive study and research habits.
• Homework observation and participation can help parents understand their children’s academic strengths and weaknesses, and even identify possible learning difficulties.
• Source: Phys.org, “ Sociologist Upends Notions about Parental Help with Homework ,” 2018.

While some amount of homework may help students connect to their learning and enhance their in-class performance, too much homework can have damaging effects. 

Students with too much homework have elevated stress levels. 

• Source: USA Today, “ Is It Time to Get Rid of Homework? Mental Health Experts Weigh In ,” 2021.
• Source: Stanford University, “ Stanford Research Shows Pitfalls of Homework ,” 2014.

Students with too much homework may be tempted to cheat. 

• Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, “ High-Tech Cheating Abounds, and Professors Bear Some Blame ,” 2010.
• Source: The American Journal of Family Therapy, “ Homework and Family Stress: With Consideration of Parents’ Self Confidence, Educational Level, and Cultural Background ,” 2015.

Homework highlights digital inequity. 

• Sources: NEAToday.org, “ The Homework Gap: The ‘Cruelest Part of the Digital Divide’ ,” 2016; CNET.com, “ The Digital Divide Has Left Millions of School Kids Behind ,” 2021.
• Source: Investopedia, “ Digital Divide ,” 2022; International Journal of Education and Social Science, “ Getting the Homework Done: Social Class and Parents’ Relationship to Homework ,” 2015.
• Source: World Economic Forum, “ COVID-19 exposed the digital divide. Here’s how we can close it ,” 2021.

Homework does not help younger students.

• Source: Review of Educational Research, “ Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Researcher, 1987-2003 ,” 2006.

To help students find the right balance and succeed, teachers and educators must start the homework conversation, both internally at their school and with parents. But in order to successfully advocate on behalf of students, teachers must be well educated on the subject, fully understanding the research and the outcomes that can be achieved by eliminating or reducing the homework burden. There is a plethora of research and writing on the subject for those interested in self-study.

For teachers looking for a more in-depth approach or for educators with a keen interest in educational equity, formal education may be the best route. If this latter option sounds appealing, there are now many reputable schools offering online master of education degree programs to help educators balance the demands of work and family life while furthering their education in the quest to help others.

YOU’RE INVITED! Watch Free Webinar on USD’s Online MEd Program >>

Be Sure To Share This Article

• Share on Twitter
• Share on Facebook
• Share on LinkedIn

Top 11 Reasons to get Your Master of Education Degree

Free 22-page Book

• Master of Education

Related Posts

How Does Homework Affect Students Mental Health?

• Post author By Zoro
• March 12, 2024
• No Comments on How Does Homework Affect Students Mental Health?

Homework is a big part of school and helps us do well in our studies. But, lately, people are worried about how it might affect how we feel. This blog will look into how does homework affect students mental health—the good and the not-so-good. Homework is awesome because it makes us better at things, helps us manage our time, and teaches us to be responsible. But sometimes, it can make us feel stressed or tired. 

Let’s explore both sides and figure out how we can make homework work better for us. Together, we can make sure that homework helps us learn and keeps us feeling good too!

Before we start talking about the homework, let us discuss some of its positive sides.

Table of Contents

The Positive Side of Homework

Critical thinking and problem-solving:.

Homework assignments often require students to engage in critical thinking and problem-solving. By tackling challenging problems independently, students develop analytical skills and the ability to approach complex issues with confidence. This cognitive engagement positively contributes to their mental development.

Consolidation of Knowledge:

Repetition is a key factor in learning, and homework provides an avenue for students to consolidate their understanding of academic concepts. Revisiting and applying knowledge through assignments reinforces learning, leading to a deeper comprehension of the subject matter. This reinforcement fosters a positive attitude towards learning and academic achievement.

Self-Directed Learning:

Homework empowers students to become self-directed learners. By independently researching, organizing information, and completing assignments, students take control of their education. This autonomy not only enhances academic performance but also cultivates a sense of self-efficacy, positively influencing their overall mental well-being.

Preparation for Future Challenges:

Beyond academic content, homework prepares students for future challenges in higher education and the workforce. The ability to manage tasks, meet deadlines, and assume responsibility for one’s work is a valuable skill set that extends beyond the classroom. This preparation instills a proactive and resilient mindset, contributing positively to students’ mental readiness for future endeavors.

Enhanced Communication Skills:

Some homework assignments involve written or oral communication, encouraging students to express their thoughts and ideas effectively. The development of communication skills is not only beneficial academically but also in various aspects of life. The ability to articulate ideas with clarity and confidence positively influences self-expression and interpersonal relationships, contributing to overall mental well-being.

Sense of Purpose and Achievement:

Successfully completing homework assignments provides students with a sense of purpose and achievement. Each completed task, no matter how small, contributes to a feeling of progress and accomplishment. This positive reinforcement fosters a healthy mindset, instilling the belief that effort and dedication lead to success, both academically and personally.

How Does Homework Affect Students Mental Health

The negative side of homework, diminished leisure time:.

A heavy load of homework can eat into the time meant for relaxation and hobbies, leaving students with limited opportunities to unwind. This lack of leisure can contribute to feelings of burnout and negatively impact their overall mental well-being.

Strain on Family Relationships:

Excessive homework can strain relationships at home as students struggle to balance academic demands with family time. This strain may lead to increased tension, creating an unhealthy environment that can contribute to stress and anxiety.

Reduced Personal Time:

Beyond impacting social life, an overwhelming amount of homework can also reduce a student’s personal time. Lack of time for self-care and personal activities can leave students feeling overwhelmed and contribute to a decline in mental health.

Negative Perception of Learning:

When homework becomes too demanding, it may lead students to associate learning with stress and pressure. This negative perception can affect their overall attitude towards education, potentially diminishing their interest in learning and harming their mental well-being.

Increased Pressure and Competition:

A constant stream of homework assignments may intensify the competitive atmosphere among students. The pressure to excel academically can create a stressful environment, fostering feelings of inadequacy and negatively impacting mental health.

Limited Time for Reflection:

Excessive homework often leaves little time for students to reflect on what they’ve learned. Reflection is crucial for understanding and internalizing knowledge, and the lack of it can contribute to a superficial understanding of subjects, potentially affecting mental clarity and overall well-being.

Finding The Balance

In the world of homework, it’s important to find a sweet spot that makes learning effective without stressing us out. One key is open communication—teachers, students, and parents chatting about what’s expected from homework. Clear rules and fair expectations make homework less overwhelming and more manageable.

Taking breaks during study time is like giving our brains a breather. Short breaks help us recharge, making it easier to concentrate. It’s like hitting the reset button for our minds, reducing stress, and making us feel better overall.

Quality matters more than quantity. Instead of drowning in lots of homework, we can focus on really understanding and using what we learn. It’s like enjoying a good meal rather than stuffing ourselves with snacks. This approach makes learning more meaningful and less stressful.

So, finding the balance means talking openly about homework, taking breaks to stay fresh, and focusing on understanding rather than piling up tasks. When we get this mix right, homework becomes a friendlier part of learning, helping our brains grow without causing unnecessary stress.

In the journey of homework and mental well-being, finding the right balance is like creating a recipe for success. By talking openly about homework, taking breaks, and valuing quality over quantity, we can make learning a more enjoyable experience. It’s not just about finishing tasks; it’s about understanding and growing.

Let’s remember that homework is meant to help us, not stress us out. So, as we navigate this homework adventure, let’s keep the communication lines open, take those refreshing breaks, and focus on the good stuff. When we find this balance, homework becomes a positive part of our learning journey, nurturing not just our minds but also our overall well-being.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

• australia (2)
• duolingo (13)
• Education (268)
• General (72)
• How To (16)
• IELTS (127)
• Latest Updates (162)
• Malta Visa (6)
• Permanent residency (1)
• Programming (31)
• Scholarship (1)
• Sponsored (4)
• Study Abroad (187)
• Technology (12)
• work permit (8)

Recent Posts

Is it time to get rid of homework? Mental health experts weigh in.

It's no secret that kids hate homework. And as students grapple with an ongoing pandemic that has had a wide range of mental health impacts, is it time schools start listening to their pleas about workloads?

Some teachers are turning to social media to take a stand against homework. 

Tiktok user @misguided.teacher says he doesn't assign it because the "whole premise of homework is flawed."

For starters, he says, he can't grade work on "even playing fields" when students' home environments can be vastly different.

"Even students who go home to a peaceful house, do they really want to spend their time on busy work? Because typically that's what a lot of homework is, it's busy work," he says in the video that has garnered 1.6 million likes. "You only get one year to be 7, you only got one year to be 10, you only get one year to be 16, 18."

Mental health experts agree heavy workloads have the potential do more harm than good for students, especially when taking into account the impacts of the pandemic. But they also say the answer may not be to eliminate homework altogether.

Emmy Kang, mental health counselor at Humantold , says studies have shown heavy workloads can be "detrimental" for students and cause a "big impact on their mental, physical and emotional health."

"More than half of students say that homework is their primary source of stress, and we know what stress can do on our bodies," she says, adding that staying up late to finish assignments also leads to disrupted sleep and exhaustion.

Cynthia Catchings, a licensed clinical social worker and therapist at Talkspace , says heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression. 

And for all the distress homework  can cause, it's not as useful as many may think, says Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and CEO of Omega Recovery treatment center.

"The research shows that there's really limited benefit of homework for elementary age students, that really the school work should be contained in the classroom," he says.

For older students, Kang says, homework benefits plateau at about two hours per night. 

"Most students, especially at these high achieving schools, they're doing a minimum of three hours, and it's taking away time from their friends, from their families, their extracurricular activities. And these are all very important things for a person's mental and emotional health."

Catchings, who also taught third to 12th graders for 12 years, says she's seen the positive effects of a no-homework policy while working with students abroad.

"Not having homework was something that I always admired from the French students (and) the French schools, because that was helping the students to really have the time off and really disconnect from school," she says.

The answer may not be to eliminate homework completely but to be more mindful of the type of work students take home, suggests Kang, who was a high school teacher for 10 years.

"I don't think (we) should scrap homework; I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework. That's something that needs to be scrapped entirely," she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments.

The pandemic made the conversation around homework more crucial 

Mindfulness surrounding homework is especially important in the context of the past two years. Many students will be struggling with mental health issues that were brought on or worsened by the pandemic , making heavy workloads even harder to balance.

"COVID was just a disaster in terms of the lack of structure. Everything just deteriorated," Kardaras says, pointing to an increase in cognitive issues and decrease in attention spans among students. "School acts as an anchor for a lot of children, as a stabilizing force, and that disappeared."

But even if students transition back to the structure of in-person classes, Kardaras suspects students may still struggle after two school years of shifted schedules and disrupted sleeping habits.

"We've seen adults struggling to go back to in-person work environments from remote work environments. That effect is amplified with children because children have less resources to be able to cope with those transitions than adults do," he explains.

'Get organized' ahead of back-to-school

In order to make the transition back to in-person school easier, Kang encourages students to "get good sleep, exercise regularly (and) eat a healthy diet."

To help manage workloads, she suggests students "get organized."

"There's so much mental clutter up there when you're disorganized. ... Sitting down and planning out their study schedules can really help manage their time," she says.

Breaking up assignments can also make things easier to tackle.

"I know that heavy workloads can be stressful, but if you sit down and you break down that studying into smaller chunks, they're much more manageable."

If workloads are still too much, Kang encourages students to advocate for themselves.

"They should tell their teachers when a homework assignment just took too much time or if it was too difficult for them to do on their own," she says. "It's good to speak up and ask those questions. Respectfully, of course, because these are your teachers. But still, I think sometimes teachers themselves need this feedback from their students."

More: Some teachers let their students sleep in class. Here's what mental health experts say.

More: Some parents are slipping young kids in for the COVID-19 vaccine, but doctors discourage the move as 'risky'

The Hawk Eye

Opinion: Is homework really worth it?

Eyesha Sadiq , Entertainment Editor | September 23, 2022

Eyesha Sadiq

Many students get overwhelmed with the amount of homework they receive, which can cause mental health issues. Around 65% of high school students deal with severe anxiety and 52% are diagnosed with depression.

That’s what the clock said. I was used to it by now. 

I only had one assignment left. I wrote my essays as my eyelids began to blink slower. I was so close to getting those two hours of sleep I knew I needed to survive the next day. I checked my grades: A’s. That was the motivation I needed to feel good. It didn’t matter that my body wasn’t getting the rest it truly needed and it didn’t matter that I didn’t get any social interaction outside of school. It didn’t matter to me to make those essential high school memories. What mattered was that my homework was done and I had my A’s. But was it really worth it?

Many students, such as myself, have after school activities that consist of sports, jobs, clubs and volunteering. Some of those same students also take AP and honors classes. The American education system has made it normal for students to go to school for eight hours, have extracurricular activities and do hours of homework afterward when it should be a time to relax from the day’s activities. On top of that, some students have to take care of their family members when they come home. When will we finally have some time for ourselves? 

“I assign about 30 minutes of homework a night,” AP human geography teacher Kelley Ferguson said. “Where students wind up having more than 30 minutes is if they procrastinate or have tons of extracurricular activities. They are unable to do work one night, [and] then that work gets doubled the next night.” 

I understand that homework is given to students to help them retain daily lessons, and is meant to be beneficial. However, in AP classes, the curriculum can be rigorous, and teachers aren’t able to teach the students everything they need to know before the test. This leads to students getting more homework to compensate for lost teaching time. 

Based on a survey given to approximately 60 Hebron students asking how long they spend on homework a day, 53% said that they spend one hour and 30 minutes or longer on homework. In addition, 53% of students also said that they lose two hours or more of sleep everyday from homework. 

Is this supposed to be the normal expectation for students? I understand students want to earn A’s and an impressive transcript so that they can get into Ivy League colleges, but to what extent should students go to get them? It shouldn’t be at the risk of not sleeping, eating or socializing because it can cause many mental and physical health issues. 

“I believe in homework because that is the opportunity for practice,” chemistry teacher Rachmad Tjachyadi said. “The reason I give homeworks with a lot of problems is because some students may need more and [homework is] trying to meet the different needs of students. Homework should take about 20 to 30 minutes for chemistry and, to me, that is actually what they are going to have to do in college for chemistry.” 

A lot of students struggle with having a social life when all they do is homework. The same survey showed 83% of Hebron students said they do homework on the weekend, and 78% said it stresses them out. Students can miss out on memorable school activities such as football games or dances because they have a test the next day or their homework is due that night. 

Only doing homework in students’ free time can lead to them becoming quickly burnt out and losing motivation for school. According to The Scholarship System , “Academic burnout is a surprisingly common problem, especially among high school seniors.” Having to go to school, write college applications and get ready for graduation makes those seniors burn out in the end.  

Not being able to make these high school memories or have a social life can lead to anxiety, depression or other mental health issues. In high school, around 65% of students deal with severe anxiety and 52% are diagnosed with depression as those students don’t get to have time to be a kid anymore before having to enter adulthood in college. 

Personally, I think homework should not be given on the weekends and be given in more limited amounts on the weekdays through offering more than enough time in class to complete it, simply because that is the time for students to relax and have their own time. They should be able to hangout with their friends, go to football games and do other activities. 

Students shouldn’t need to be worried about what homework is due that night or if they have enough time to study for their next test. Being a kid while you still can is more important than doing homework. 

Senior Eyesha Sadiq is the entertainment editor and this is her second year on the staff. When she’s not in the newsroom, she’s either playing with...

All Stories

Going to the “GUTS World Tour” is never a “bad idea right?”

Bringing diet culture to the table

Holiday gift guide: 23 gift ideas for 2023

“Killers of the Flower Moon”: a haunting portrayal of love and genocide

Eras (Saahir’s Version): Speak Now

Opinion: The lonely road of car dependency

Opinion: The myth of consumer “environmentalism”

Opinion: Forgive but don’t forget.

Eras. (Saahir’s Version): Fearless

Photo Gallery: First home football game 8/25

Hebron High School News Online

• General Feature
• Multi-Feature
• Hawks Uncovered
• Baseball/Softball
• Swim/Water Polo
• Other Sports
• Infographics

Comments (3)

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Layla • Mar 14, 2024 at 4:05 PM

I cannot relate to this as much as you think

Ashwin J • Sep 11, 2023 at 11:15 AM

I agree, many students put in so many hours in their homework including me. One suggestion I find helpful, is to spend time researching effective methods on the network (YouTube, Instagram, TikTok) to find what boosts my productivity and be better at time management. This helps in the long term since it benefits me to finish homework quickly and to also understand the context of the homework’s topic like textbook reading.

nope g beans • May 28, 2023 at 6:14 PM

pls help me im dying from procrastination

• Close Menu Search
• Recommend a Story

The Lion's Roar

April 12 Superchunk’s Debut: They Can Only Go Up From Here

April 12 Dirty Bird: An Underrated Indie Gem

April 12 The Rebellion Against Instagram’s Unrealistic Body Expectations 

April 12 US Congress Passes Bill That Could Ban TikTok: What To Know

April 12 Let’s Make Some Sense of March Madness

How Homework Is Destroying Teens’ Health

Jessica Amabile '24 , Staff Writer March 25, 2022

“[Students] average about 3.1 hours of homework each night,” according to an article published by Stanford .  Teens across the country come home from school, exhausted from a long day, only to do more schoolwork.  They sit at their computers, working on homework assignments for hours on end.  To say the relentless amount of work they have to do is overwhelming would be an understatement.  The sheer amount of homework given has many negative impacts on teenagers.

Students have had homework for decades, but in more recent years it has become increasingly more demanding.  Multiple studies have shown that students average about three hours of homework per night.  The Atlantic mentioned that students now have twice as much homework as students did in the 1990s.  This is extremely detrimental to teens’ mental health and levels of stress.  Students have a lot to do after school, such as spending time with family, extracurricular activities, taking care of siblings or other family members, hanging out with friends, or all of the above.  Having to juggle all of this as well as hours on end of homework is unreasonable because teenagers already have enough to think or worry about.   

According to a student- run survey conducted in Cherry Hill West, students reported that they received the most homework in math, history, and language arts classes.  They receive anywhere from 1 to 4 or more hours of homework every day, but only about 22.7% somewhat or strongly agree that it helps them learn.  Of the students who participated, 63.6% think schools should continue to give out homework sometimes, while 27.3% said they should not give out homework at all.  In an open-ended response section, students had a lot to say.  One student wrote, “I think we should get homework to practice work if we are seen struggling, or didn’t finish work in class. But if we get homework, I think it just shows that the teacher needs more time to teach and instead of speeding up, gives us more work.”  Another added,  “Homework is important to learn the material. However, too much may lead to the student not learning that much, or it may become stressful to do homework everyday.”  Others wrote, “The work I get in chemistry doesn’t help me learn at all if anything it confuses me more,” and “I think math is the only class I could use homework as that helps me learn while world language is supposed to help me learn but feels more like a time waste.”   A student admitted, “I think homework is beneficial for students but the amount of homework teachers give us each day is very overwhelming and puts a lot of stress on kids. I always have my work done but all of the homework I have really changes my emotions and it effects me.”  Another pointed out, “you are at school for most of your day waking up before the sun and still after all of that they send you home each day with work you need to do before the next day. Does that really make sense[?]”

As an article from Healthline mentioned, “Researchers asked students whether they experienced physical symptoms of stress… More than 80 percent of students reported having at least one stress-related symptom in the past month, and 44 percent said they had experienced three or more symptoms.”  If school is causing students physical symptoms of stress, it needs to re-evaluate whether or not homework is beneficial to students, especially teenagers.  Students aren’t learning anything if they have hours of “busy work” every night, so much so that it gives them symptoms of stress, such as headaches, weight loss, sleep deprivation, and so on.  The continuous hours of work are doing nothing but harming students mentally and physically.

The mental effects of homework can be harmful as well.  Mental health issues are often ignored, even when schools can be the root of the problem.  An article from USA Today contained a quote from a licensed therapist and social worker named Cynthia Catchings, which reads, “ heavy workloads can also cause serious mental health problems in the long run, like anxiety and depression.”  Mental health problems are not beneficial in any way to education.  In fact, it makes it more difficult for students to focus and learn.  

Some studies have suggested that students should receive less homework.  To an extent, homework can help students in certain areas, such as math.  However, too much has detrimental impacts on their mental and physical health.  Emmy Kang, a mental health counselor, has a suggestion.  She mentioned, “I don’t think (we) should scrap homework; I think we should scrap meaningless, purposeless busy work-type homework. That’s something that needs to be scrapped entirely,” she says, encouraging teachers to be thoughtful and consider the amount of time it would take for students to complete assignments,” according to USA Today .  Students don’t have much control over the homework they receive, but if enough people could explain to teachers the negative impacts it has on them, they might be convinced.  Teachers need to realize that their students have other classes and other assignments to do.  While this may not work for everything, it would at least be a start, which would be beneficial to students.

The sole purpose of schools is to educate children and young adults to help them later on in life.  However, school curriculums have gone too far if hours of homework for each class are seen as necessary and beneficial to learning.  Many studies have shown that homework has harmful effects on students, so how does it make sense to keep assigning it?  At this rate, the amount of time spent on homework will increase in years to come, along with the effects of poor mental and physical health.  Currently, students do an average of 3 hours of homework, according to the Washington Post, and the estimated amount of teenagers suffering from at least one mental illness is 1 in 5, as Polaris Teen Center stated.  This is already bad enough–it’s worrisome to think it could get much worse.  Homework is not more important than physical or mental health, by any standards.

What time should high school should start?

• 7:00 AM or earlier
• 7:30 AM (Current Start Time)
• After 9:00 AM

View Results

• Polls Archive

Superchunk’s Debut: They Can Only Go Up From Here

Dirty Bird: An Underrated Indie Gem

My Suggestions on Fun Horror Games You Should Play!

 Breakdown of All Fighting Scenes in The Hunger Games: Ballad of the Songbirds and Snakes

15 Memes that Everyone Will Recognize

Causes of Fights in High Schools

Imaginary: My Predictions and Thoughts

Let’s Rank: Every Album by The Beatles 

Homeroom Policy – Pros and Cons

Six Flags Fright Fest Overview

Comments (0)

Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get Boardhawk in your inbox

Enter your email address to subscribe and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Email Address

Homework is traumatic: The problem with “mental health”

Editor’s note: This article was written by a metro-area teacher who asked to remain anonymous.

When I pass the front office in a low-performing middle school, I hear the walls shake.  

A father is in the conference room, screaming at an administrator. “Why wasn’t I told that my daughter was in therapy?”  

It isn’t the first time I have heard this in the office. It’s normal now. Parents upset that their children, unknown to them, are counseled through whatever “trauma” du jour they’ve experienced, leaving the parent unaware of whatever situation their child is in.

“Mental health” counselors intend to alleviate the “trauma” students encounter in their daily lives. While the intention is noble, the practice is varied, with most students quickly realizing the power of victimhood in our society.  

All students have to do is label themselves “traumatized.” Social media helps them develop these identities while “mental health” seals the deal with services.

Student “trauma” can include anything the student perceives as “traumatic” since mental health is entirely self-reported. Homework?  Traumatic. Boyfriend problems? Traumatic. Chores?  Abuse and trauma. Arguments with parents? Abuse, neglect and definitely traumatic.  Classroom expectations? Traumatic – rules are abuse.

See a problem?

“Mental health” itself needs a shift of position from the language of victimhood to the language of resilience.  This means developing EXECUTIVE FUNCTION – choice-making. Why?  Because understanding that everyone is making choices cuts at the core of victimhood. Life doesn’t just happen to you. You have choices.

Maybe, just maybe, if you chose to do your chores and homework, you might have less “trauma” in your life.

The eternally growing net of victimhood in “mental health” has become increasingly absurd.  Also, it imagines that all trauma is equal. It is not.  

Real trauma needs help and treatment. But when “mental health” treats unhappy teenagers who don’t want to do chores or homework as trauma victims, everyone suffers – especially the teen whose sense of self has now been handed over to anyone who doesn’t live up to their unrealistic expectations.

Back to the parent in the middle school conference room. Had he known his daughter was in therapy, he might have been able to provide valuable insight and support to issues she was encountering.  

In a world where victim takes all, children quickly understand the power of their real or perceived “trauma.” The ultimate losers are the children themselves whose identities become entrenched in victimhood and “trauma.”

Share this post

About the author.

Guest Columnist

Related posts.

Reflecting on being fired: A graduation gift to myself

Seclusion must be banned by all school districts in Colorado

Manage like an ostrich: Marrero eliminates principal feedback on his leadership

• All News & Stories
• Berry College News
• Berry Stories
• Articles & Guest Blog Posts
• In The News
• Faculty & Staff
• Berry Magazine
• Athletic News
• SHARE A STORY
• Campus Life
• Student Enterprises

5 Ways to Strengthen Mental Health Muscles for Exam Season

As exams loom over colleges this month, students are trying to finish their semesters successfully. Sometimes students define a successful exam week as getting good grades and passing classes. While these are important, focusing only on academic success can harm mental health. Learning to manage stress in healthy ways is an essential part of the college experience. Want to learn how to handle the mental weightlifting of exam week? In this piece, we'll explore effective ways to strengthen your mental wellness for exam week and for your future.

What is stress?

Simply defined, stress is the body's reaction to the strain you experience under pressure. It can be a physical, mental or emotional response. Although it gets a bad rap, not all stress is negative. In fact, it is often a catalyst for growth. For example, the uneasiness you may feel when you step out of your comfort zone is an example of positive stress that may help you grow.

Everyone experiences heightened stress at some point. For college students, months like November and April can often take the cake for high-stress seasons. Students' calendars are jam-packed with end-of-semester social events as well as final projects and exams.

Knowing how to strengthen your mental health muscles in these moments is a valuable skill. According to the American Psychological Association , nearly a quarter of adults today rate their daily stress between 8 and 10 (1 being little to no stress and a 10 being a great deal of stress). Because elevated stress is a reality of our culture, it’s essential to know the signs of negative stress and understand how to manage it.

Knowing your stress response

Negative responses to high stress can crop up in several different forms. Here is a list of common reactions people have to high-stress situations to help you identify what you’re going through.

Anxiety and exam week symptoms

Our society frequently uses the word anxiety, but many people talk about it broadly rather than naming thought patterns or actions associated with it. In general, anxiety is excessive worry or fear. Sometimes it looks like looping thoughts that play over and over in your head or catastrophic fears where you exaggerate possible future outcomes in your mind.

Worry and fear can also manifest in physical symptoms, such as racing heartbeat, nausea, sweating, trembling, disrupted sleep and difficulty concentrating when the body perceives the fear or worry as valid.

During exam week, anxiety can take several forms. Along with the symptoms above, some anxious students become perfectionists, setting impossible goals and standards for themselves and then falling apart when they can’t meet the standards. Other anxious students will show avoidant behavior, skipping studying completely or procrastinating.

Depression and exam week symptoms

Feelings of hopelessness, sadness or loss of interest in activities often characterize depression. In general, students experiencing depression have a lack of motivation to get out of bed or study. They will procrastinate and withdraw. And likely, they will feel persistent sadness, guilt or hopelessness about their academic performance.

Burnout and exam week symptoms

This stress response often happens when people experience high-stress levels over a long period with no healthy breaks or self-care. Ultimately, you work to the point of exhaustion. Symptoms begin as irritability and reduced productivity but become severe fatigue and even illness.

How to build mental strength

1. pursue support and free mental health resources.

One of the best things about college is the sheer number of mental health resources available to you for free. From peer mental health coaching and group counseling to individual counseling and crisis resources, colleges know that students need support in psychological well-being as they grow academically and developmentally. These higher education experts also share timely educational materials through free digital newsletters and social media.

Beyond personnel in these offices, campuses build systems of support through student, faculty and staff mentors. Students can benefit from already having established relationships when they need advice. Look out for extra well-being resources during exams too. For example, at Berry, student volunteers who promote mental wellness known as peer educators set up a self-care tools booth that includes therapy dogs, coloring pages and fidget toys for taking brain breaks.

In the future, building a support network and knowing how to find resources to care for yourself will be an advantage.

2. Plan ahead

Most colleges share exam schedules at the beginning of the semester. Figure out when your exams are and which ones you need to prioritize. It’s likely you’ve completed a lot of the classwork before exam week. For example, if 80% of your work for a course is complete, you can figure out which exams and projects matter most. Sometimes your exam will not affect your overall class grade at all. Once you know which exams are most important, schedule out manageable chunks of study time .

In the future, knowing how to reflect on your responsibilities and decide what needs your attention most will be valuable.

3. Prioritize marginal activities

Think of margin as the space between two things. For college students, margin typically describes the time between social and academic activities. It's necessary breathing room or recovery time that helps you mentally recoup. Students often push marginal activities aside, like sleeping, eating and exercising, to pack more into the day. However, disregarding opportunities to recharge significantly impact a student's well-being. Once you build a study plan, make room for the marginal activities that keep you mentally, physically and emotionally fueled. When there is no room for eating, sleeping, breaks or exercise, you’ve built an unmanageable, overcommitted schedule.

Expert Advice:

Terri Cordle, a licensed professional counselor at Berry College who has worked in higher education for over 25 years says, “The best way for students to prioritize mental health is to plan ahead for self-care. But self-care doesn’t mean special activities or treats. Instead, it's about daily habits students do to manage stress: getting adequate and restorative sleep, eating regular nutritious meals, hydrating with non-caffeinated drinks, moving including exercising, spending time outdoors and having downtime where they are not doing school or work-related tasks.

These are the basics of stress-resilience and wellness. Remember: it is productive to take breaks to eat, hydrate, sleep, move and have some downtime. I encourage students to think of these activities as fuel for their minds and bodies. Without fuel, we all lack the energy it takes to focus and concentrate, have clarity of thought, be creative and problem-solve.”

In the future, you will likely juggle more responsibilities and activities than you do in college. Start building the practice of margin in your schedule now.

This practice is for in-the-moment stress response situations. If you find yourself experiencing physical symptoms of anxiety, depression or burnout while studying, practice breathing exercises or get up and walk outside for a few minutes. Meditation, prayer and mindfulness practices can be excellent tools for relaxation that can help you diminish physical responses to stress and regain concentration.

In the future, knowing how to settle yourself and your body will help you get past mental blocks that might keep you from success.

5. Practice positive thinking

If you are struggling with negative thought patterns, share them with a trusted friend or counselor and challenge negative thoughts. Then visualize yourself performing well or achieving your goals, as positive visualization can help boost confidence.

In the future, you will likely be able to name negative thought patterns with practice and push past them when your anxiety or depression is triggered.

In the end, remember that high-stress and pressure situations are a part of life you can learn to manage. Just like training for a race where your body experiences physical stress, building resilience takes practice and training to build your mental health muscles.

Related Articles

Footer Menu

Mental Issues

One of the worst manifestations of too many homework assignments is triggering various mental ailments and deviations. Some of them are very dangerous and may remain for long, if not for the entire life! Youngsters may take their academic liabilities too close to the heart. As they are worried about their results, it leads to various mental ailments and deviations.

The Burnout

Too many tasks and great mental pressure make students “burn out”. Children and young adults cannot withstand the constant flow of academic tasks and duties. They get exhausted as they are stressed and deprived of sleep. All they do is think about their learning. It leads to burnout.

Unfortunately, buying is pretty common for all schools, colleges, and universities in the USA.  Other students crack jokes about the so-called nerds. It is an ugly behavior and when children grow up, they understand that and become ashamed. Nonetheless, the damage will be already done. Clever and diligent |nerds” will suffer from it, and the negative consequences may remain with them until the last day of their lives.

Some of them will surely want to become “normal” and so may stop doing their homework. They will not be that diligent to try not to stand out of the crowd. It is also a huge mistake, but due to their inexperience, they don’t realize it.

No Time for Private Affairs

Too many homework tasks deprive students of time for themselves. They cannot have enough fun. There is little time for personal relationships, communication with their peers, having hobbies, and so on. This shortage of time makes many students oppose their homework duties. They start to hate it, and so may top learning. At any rate, it is a serious drawback for their mental health.

Tips to Getting Rid of Homework Stress

We want to help all students. We have gathered several great tips and tricks that may help to handle your homework tasks faster and easier. Make allowance for the next points:

• Plan your time reasonably;
• Set realistic deadlines and goals;
• Prioritize your goal;
• Always have time to rest;
• Sleep enough;
• Understand when help is required .

Follow these tips and your academic life will become much easier!

Consider Using a Custom Writing Service

One of the most effective ways to put off your academic load is to use the help of a good custom writing platform. If you find a trustworthy writing service, you may solve almost any learning issue. It hires only certified and skilled experts who specialize in various disciplines and assignment types.

Such services have hundreds of educated writers who can easily handle any assignment in programming, java, management, statistics, accounting, law, Matlab, history, etc. You may freely count on help with your:

• Term paper;
• Lab report;
• Book review;
• PowerPoint presentation;
• Dissertation and so on.

As every order is 100% customizable, you may get any kind of academic help. Discuss all the terms with your solver and tell how your paper must be tackled. You may request:

• Writing and rewriting;
• Editing and proofreading;
• Researching and analyzing;
• Citing and referencing;
• Generating topics;
• Calculating, etc.

You may not worry about the price you will surely have to pay. If you find a highly reputed platform, it will not charge a lot. Such services set pretty cheap prices to make affordable their help. Every ordinary student will be able to buy the required type of help. Just set the demands and regulate the total cost until it suits your financial possibilities. Moreover, these services offer great discounts for students to save up more of their money.

The help is very fast. Everything depends on the demands you set. Make sure they are realistic. For example, a simple essay can be completed in 2-4 hours. A case study or coursework will take much more time. Place a complicated assignment beforehand and your helper will surely accomplish it on time. You are expected to provide the next details:

• Type of skills;
• Type of the paper.

The price of pro help isn’t that high if you choose a highly reputed platform. It also depends on the demands you set. Change the value of quality, length, or urgency to make the price cheaper. Most assignment types have the same cost. However, such a complex paper as a dissertation will surely cost more. Nonetheless, the prices are pretty affordable and fair.

Among other dividends you will enjoy are:

• Authentic papers;
• Inserting citations and bibliography of all formats;
• Protection of your private data;
• Availability and support 24 hours round the clock.

Wrapping Up

As you can see, doing homework may be harmful to youngsters. Educators should finally realize that they assign too many tasks. Youngsters need more time for themselves to escape mental complications. Follow our useful tips and tricks to get rid of at least some part of your academic load.

Social Share

About Salman Zafar

2 responses to why homework is bad for mental health.

Pingback: Is Global Warming Causing Stress Among Young Students?

Pingback: 9 Websites That Can Help You With Your Homework

Share your Thoughts Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Site Search

Popular articles.

• How Eco-friendly Batteries Can Benefit From Biomass Energy?
• The Need for Speciality Membrane Covers
• Reasons to Recycle Used Coffee Grounds
• The Technology Revolutionizing Commercial Waste Management
• How Bugs Turn Your Food Waste into Fuel
• Food Waste Management – Consumer Behavior and Food Waste Disposers

Follow on Facebook

Newest Articles

• Exploring the Role of Data Virtualization in ETL Processes
• How To Design Grow Rooms For Your Plants?
• 6 Tips to Save Money On Your Electricity Bill
• How to Give Recognition to Employees
• How to Resolve Scratch Disk Photoshop Error
• Analysis of Agro Biomass Projects
• The Importance of Indoor Air Quality Monitoring
• Thermocouples: Types and Uses
• Manage Trees With Sustainability In Mind
• How Much Water is Used in Arizona Daily?
• How to Properly Scale Up Your Environmental Consulting Firm?
• Bioenergy Developments in Malaysia
• 9 Amazing Things You Didn’t Know About Tesla Solar Batteries
• 6 Reasons Solar Is Your Best Investment In the Future
• A Guide to Recycling Electronics: Everything You Need to Know

Subscribe to Articles

Join 15,589 other subscribers

Email Address

Privacy Overview

• SUGGESTED TOPICS
• The Magazine
• Newsletters
• Managing Yourself
• Managing Teams
• Work-life Balance
• The Big Idea
• Data & Visuals
• Reading Lists
• Case Selections
• HBR Learning
• Topic Feeds
• Account Settings
• Email Preferences

5 Strategies for Improving Mental Health at Work

• Morra Aarons-Mele

Benefits and conversations around mental health evolved during the pandemic. Workplace cultures are starting to catch up.

Companies are investing in — and talking about — mental health more often these days. But employees aren’t reporting a corresponding rise in well-being. Why? The author, who wrote a book on mental health and work last year, explores several key ways organizations haven’t gone far enough in implementing a culture of well-being. She also makes five key suggestions on what they can do to improve the mental health of their employees.

“I have never felt so seen.”

• Morra Aarons-Mele is a workplace mental health consultant and author of  The Anxious Achiever: Turn Your Biggest Fears Into Your Leadership Superpower (Harvard Business Review Press, 2023). She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, O the Oprah Magazine, TED, among others, and is the host of the Anxious Achiever podcast from LinkedIn Presents. morraam

Partner Center

Supporting Mental Health in the Workplace

Work plays a significant role in workers’ mental health. This impact is so substantial that managers impact workers’ mental health more than doctors or therapists do, according to the Workforce Institute’s Mental Health at Work study . The U.S. Surgeon General even emphasizes the role of workplaces in shaping our mental and physical well-being, noting that the average full-time U.S. worker spends about half of their waking life at work. Employment arrangements, wages, and working conditions are powerful social determinants of health, including our mental health.

Mental health is a critical part of worker well-being and is central to overall health . The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health’s (NIOSH) long-standing research program in work stress shows that mental health worsens with chronic exposure to occupational stress. Research also shows that workplace risk factors can contribute to health problems outside of work. Harmful physical and emotional responses can happen when job requirements do not match a workers’ capabilities, resources, or needs.

Mental health matters to workers

• The American Psychological Association’s 2023 Work in America Survey found that 95% of workers said it is very or somewhat important to them to work for an organization that respects the boundaries between work and nonwork time. In addition, 92% said it is very or somewhat important to them to work for an organization that provides support for employee mental health and that values their emotional and psychological well-being.
• Workers want healthy work cultures, not self-care perks, according to Mind Share Partners’ 2023 Mental Health at Work Report . The report found that workers rated healthy, supportive work cultures as more helpful than mental health treatment and self-care resources.
• The Mind the Workplace Report by Mental Health America, a NIOSH Total Worker Health ® Affiliate, found that managerial support strongly correlates with positive employee mental health outcomes. The report found that workers with supportive managers report higher rates of psychological safety and are more comfortable asking for support and providing feedback to their managers.

Strategies to support workers

Employers have a unique opportunity to invest in workers’ mental health and well-being. Addressing mental health in the workplace can help employers strengthen their organizations’ success and reduce health care costs for their businesses and workers.

Promote a safe and healthy workplace culture: Employers and organizations can use the NIOSH Total Worker Health (TWH) approach to create and sustain safe and healthy workplace cultures. To align with the approach, workplace programs should address environmental determinants of health rather than focusing only or primarily on individual-level interventions. Programs should only use individual-level interventions after addressing organizational-level fixes. For example, a program to reduce work-related stress might:

• Implement organizational and management policies that eliminate root causes of stress and provide workers with increased flexibility and control over their work and schedules.
• Provide training for supervisors on successful approaches and strategies to reduce stressful working conditions.
• Provide training and interventions to build resiliency for stress management and reduction for all workers. Provide access to Employee Assistance Programs.

Prioritize efforts to advance workers’ safety, health, and well-being using the Hierarchy of Controls Applied to NIOSH TWH . Identify initial steps to improve workforce safety, health, and well-being and measure your organization’s progress using the Fundamentals of TWH Approaches workbook .

Build workplaces that are engines of well-being: The U.S. Surgeon General’s  Framework for Mental Health & Well-Being in the Workplace outlines the foundational role that workplaces should play in promoting workers’ health and well-being. The framework outlines five essentials to help organizations develop, institutionalize, and update policies, processes, and practices that best support workers. A new  report from NIOSH also examines the impact of work-related psychosocial hazards and provides six crucial societal actions needed to address this pressing problem.

Implement supportive supervision : Mental Health America’s Workplace Mental Health Toolkit outlines ways to cultivate supportive managers . Employers and organizations can also train leaders on improving workers’ health and well-being. Examples include the online training course Understanding and Preventing Burnout among Public Health Workers: Guidance for Public Health Leaders , TWH Leadership Programs , and the Safety and Health Improvement Program toolkit . Promising supervisory strategies are also described in the on-demand webinar How Work Can Impact Mental Health and What Leaders Can Do .

Assess worker well-being: Worker input is essential to developing workplace programs. Understand how your workforce is doing with the NIOSH Worker Well-Being Questionnaire (WellBQ) . The NIOSH WellBQ is a 68-item, 15-minute survey tool that provides an integrated assessment of worker well-being. It can also help employers identify and prioritize interventions to improve worker well-being.

Address health worker mental health: Health workers have historically faced challenging working conditions and recent research shows that these are worsening their mental health. The NIOSH  Impact Wellbeing ™ campaign gives hospital leaders evidence-informed solutions to reduce healthcare worker burnout, sustain wellbeing, and build a system where healthcare workers thrive. NIOSH also released an evidence-informed and actionable guide for the nation’s hospital leaders to improve healthcare worker wellbeing – Impact Wellbeing™ Guide: Taking Action to Improve Healthcare Worker Wellbeing . This Guide provides a step-by-step process for hospitals to start making organizational-level changes that will impact and improve the mental health of their employees.

How does your workplace support workers’ mental health?

Emily Kirby, BPH, is a Health Communication Specialist in the NIOSH Office of Communication and Research to Practice.

L. Casey Chosewood, MD, MPH, is Director of the NIOSH Office for Total Worker Health.

• Critical Steps Your Workplace Can Take Today to Prevent Suicide
• Mental Health, Alcohol Use, and Substance Use Resources for Workers and Employers
• Psychosocial Hazards Often Overlooked in Construction Industry

Post a Comment

Cancel reply.

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

• 50th Anniversary Blog Series
• Additive Manufacturing
• Aging Workers
• Agriculture
• Animal/Livestock hazards
• Artificial Intelligence
• Back Injury
• Bloodborne pathogens
• Cardiovascular Disease
• cold stress
• commercial fishing
• Communication
• Construction
• Cross Cultural Communication
• Dermal Exposure
• Education and Research Centers
• Electrical Safety
• Emergency Response/Public Sector
• Engineering Control
• Environment/Green Jobs
• Epidemiology
• Fire Fighting
• Food Service
• Future of Work and OSH
• Healthy Work Design
• Hearing Loss
• Heat Stress
• Holiday Themes
• Hydraulic Fracturing
• Infectious Disease Resources
• International
• Landscaping
• Law Enforcement
• Manufacturing
• Manufacturing Mondays Series
• Mental Health
• Motor Vehicle Safety
• Musculoskeletal Disorders
• Nanotechnology
• National Occupational Research Agenda
• Needlestick Prevention
• NIOSH-funded Research
• Nonstandard Work Arrangements
• Observances
• Occupational Health Equity
• Oil and Gas
• Outdoor Work
• Partnership
• Personal Protective Equipment
• Physical activity
• Policy and Programs
• Prevention Through Design
• Prioritizing Research
• Reproductive Health
• Research to practice r2p
• Researcher Spotlights
• Respirators
• Respiratory Health
• Risk Assessment
• Safety and Health Data
• Service Sector
• Small Business
• Social Determinants of Health
• Spanish translations
• Sports and Entertainment
• Strategic Foresight
• Struck-by injuries
• Student Training
• Substance Use Disorder
• Surveillance
• Synthetic Biology
• Systematic review
• Take Home Exposures
• Teachers/School Workers
• Temporary/Contingent Workers
• Total Worker Health
• Translations (other than Spanish)
• Transportation
• Uncategorized
• Veterinarians
• Wearable Technologies
• Wholesale and Retail Trade
• Work Schedules
• Workers' Compensation
• Workplace Medical Mystery
• Workplace Supported Recovery
• World Trade Center Health Program
• Young Workers

To receive email updates about this page, enter your email address:

Exit Notification / Disclaimer Policy

• The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) cannot attest to the accuracy of a non-federal website.
• Linking to a non-federal website does not constitute an endorsement by CDC or any of its employees of the sponsors or the information and products presented on the website.
• You will be subject to the destination website's privacy policy when you follow the link.
• CDC is not responsible for Section 508 compliance (accessibility) on other federal or private website.

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Mental health is a measure of success, not a reason for politicians to sneer

Rishi Sunak’s attack on ‘overmedicalisation’ is ignoring the value we should be placing on our wellbeing

T here’s more to life than money, but societies can struggle to express it. When we talk about the state of nations and their citizens, we tend ultimately to boil it down to a few economic indicators. These can tell us a great deal, but they don’t quite tell us everything. The untouched stretch of ancient woodland, the arts in education, the close-knit community, the healthy childhood: there are plenty of valuable things that cannot always be weighed on this scale.

And this is a problem, particularly for people who want to hang on to those valuable things. Here’s a rule of thumb: if you can’t measure how much something is worth, it becomes tricky to protect it. Those who do not want to see a bluebell wood destroyed or another humanities subject ditched can find it hard to argue their case against the cold logic of pounds and pence. What yardstick can they use that will be taken seriously?

It’s not just activists for whom this is an issue. Governments have long flirted with the idea of an alternative to GDP, a way to capture what really matters to citizens. A “ happiness index ” was at one point a fashionable idea, but has proved too narrow and ambiguous. People often misunderstood what surveys were asking them – happiness can be hard to pin down. How do you weigh pleasure against contentment? What about meaning?

But I wonder whether over the past few years a solution has presented itself, almost without us noticing. Little by little, a sturdier, better evidenced and more widely applicable unit of value has emerged in public life: that of mental health. We all use it already.

Is it good for your mental health? This is the question by which increasingly large parts of our lives are evaluated. The language of psychology has spread so that it covers almost all human activity, from the quality of our workplaces, to the state of teenagers, to the way we spend our free time, to the manner in which we engage with our friends. If politicians are looking for a new way to measure what is important to us, they only have to open their ears.

Take, for example, the simple hobby. People no longer merely go for a walk, take up birdwatching, adopt a pet or learn to bake cakes. Instead, they discover a form of self-care that conquers their anxiety, changes their life or saves their marriage. This is what we aspire to, now, in our free time – a radical overhaul of our mental health. Just look at the books hobbyists are writing these days. Sample: Hooked: How Crafting Saved My Life ; Thirty-Thousand Steps: A Memoir of Sprinting Toward Life After Loss ; Dinner for One: How Cooking in Paris Saved Me .

The arts, too, are increasingly framed as aides to wellbeing. Why invest in a gallery pass ? It’s good for your mental health. Why take up an instrument or learn to paint ? It’s good for your mental health. Where once art was dedicated to the glory of God, now it is laid on the altar of mental wellbeing, which might well be the religion of our secular age. (The archbishop of Canterbury once complained that Christ the saviour had become Christ the counsellor .)

Even fictional characters are these days evaluated in terms of their mental health. The writer Parul Sehgal has noted the rise of the trauma plot , which does not “direct our curiosity toward the future (will they or won’t they?) but back into the past (what happened to her?).” And we do this to real-life characters too. Channel 4’s recent The Rise and Fall of Boris Johnson is one in a long series of probes into the former prime minister that attempts to locate his future actions somewhere in his childhood. Tabloids used to fill their pages with claims about what gives you cancer (intermittent fasting, red wine, hot tea) or helps stave it off (intermittent fasting, red wine, hot tea). Now the story is wellbeing. What helps? What hinders?

Now, it is easy to scoff at all this, and plenty do. Many are turned off by the spread of this newfangled language and what they see as the co-option of common sense. (What happened to just going for a swim or seeing your mates? Isn’t this “mental health” stuff all rather obvious?) Indeed, this scepticism was probably the basis for a nascent culture war launched last week by Rishi Sunak, who announced a plan to withdraw disability benefits from some people with mental health conditions , in a bid to tackle the “overmedicalising [of] the everyday challenges of life”.

But these critics – and that solution – badly miss the mark. Learning more about our mental health, what helps and what doesn’t, is in fact rather useful. This knowledge was once the preserve of academics and those who could afford therapy; now anyone can get hold of it.

This can only be a good thing. The evidence base may not be complete, but it is weighty and increasing all the time. The solution to “overmedicalisation” is surely not to ditch people in need but to continue to improve our understanding of mental health. And we shouldn’t presume, either, that complex large-scale societies always proceed in a healthy “commonsense” direction; it is new research into mental health that is guiding us back to “commonsense” practices – seeing your mates more, going for a swim outside – that we were in danger of leaving in the past.

If we want an alternative unit of value by which to assess and guide a society, we could do worse than the mental health of its citizens. In a way, we’ve already adopted it. Despite Sunak’s posturing, mental health is a potent political tool. It was only recently that he launched a crackdown on mobile phones in schools on the basis that they harm children’s mental health.

Mental health impact is the reason we now take loneliness seriously . It is the metric by which we increasingly judge workplaces; the government has previously urged employers to improve support. It is the justification for keeping hold of green spaces and, increasingly, for caring about the environment in the first place. We already measure ourselves by our mental health. Time to put that to use.

• Mental health

Most viewed

• The Star ePaper
• Subscriptions
• Manage Profile
• Change Password
• Manage Logins
• Manage Subscription
• Transaction History
• Manage Billing Info
• Manage For You
• Manage Bookmarks
• Package & Pricing

Experts: Youth’s mental wellbeing requires transformation of cities and social life

Tuesday, 23 Apr 2024

Related News

Tackling mental health crisis needs collective effort, says Yeoh

Malaysian youths' mental health status at moderate level, study finds, rakan muda activities can help alleviate mental health issues among youth, says yeoh.

PETALING JAYA: The Malaysian Youth Mental Health Index can be a vital tool for monitoring the “psychosocial health” of youth on a periodic basis, say experts.

Consultant paediatrician Datuk Dr Amar Singh HSS said the mental health problem faced by youth is not peculiar to Malaysia but has been observed worldwide.

“It might be better to move from calling this a ‘mental health’ problem to a ‘psychosocial’ problem. We can only expect it to worsen over time unless we act decisively to improve the situation for our youth,” he said.

The index, he said, is vital as a critical tool or guide to periodically monitor the psychosocial health of Malaysian youth.

ALSO READ: Survey: Majority of Malaysian youth have got the blues

Dr Amar was commenting on the findings of the Malaysian Youth Index 2023 (MyMHI’23) launched yesterday. It covers seven domains, namely lifestyle, surrounding environment, personal characteristics, life experiences, social support, coping mechanism, and healthy mind.

“MyMHI’23 overall rating was 71.9, from close to 6,000 participants, and shows us that Malaysian youth, as a whole, face a moderate risk of mental health issues.

“We would appreciate disaggregated data to see the index by social class, geographical location, ethnicity and gender,” he said.

ALSO READ: Tackling mental health crisis needs collective effort, says Yeoh

Of the domains, the worst scoring areas were “surrounding environment” (65.5), “healthy mind” (66.1) and “social support” (68.3), he noted.

“This data suggests that youth find the environment not very supportive, especially the physical environment and social expectations, are receiving inadequate support from family, significant others and experts, and many are experiencing some degree of anxiety or depression,” he added.

While acknowledging that there are good recommendations in the report, Dr Amar said to initiate a meaningful and real action plan, it is important to understand the reasons behind this global growing “psychosocial” pandemic.

ALSO READ: Malaysian youths' mental health status at moderate level, study finds

“The reasons are complex and the action plan needs to call for long-term prevention via a transformation of cities and social life.

“We require meaningful connections and relationships that are not screen-based, and numerous city-based green lungs for families to hang out and find each other.

“We need to change the focus of society on what constitutes success – relationships, and not achievements, acquisition, ability or fame.

“As we work on prevention, parents need to invest more time in listening to their children, and teachers must be aware of what is happening to the children they are teaching,” he added.

Aside from that, Dr Amar said the government must invest in the expansion of psychosocial services for adolescents nationwide with targeted federal funding.

Prof Dr Sharifa Ezat Wan Puteh, a health economics and public health specialist with Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, said the study serves as a valuable early indication of potential mental health problems among Malaysian youth.

She pointed to another survey that was conducted in 2019 that had revealed that some 424,000 children in Malaysia had mental health problems, with one in eight adolescents aged 10 to 19 estimated to have a mental disorder.

“It’s crucial to continue addressing mental health challenges and providing support to those in need and from low-income families with conflicts,” she said.

However, Assoc Prof Dr Anasuya Jegathevi Jegathesan, dean of the Psychology and Social Sciences Faculty of University of Cyberjaya, said the research had not identified the actual groups where support was lacking and at actual risk.

“The report as a snapshot fails to show where effort should be put in, what groups would benefit from what kind of interventions and who are the most endangered,” she said, adding that more clarity is needed on the data.

Related stories:

Tags / Keywords: Mental Health , Youth , MyMHI23 , Experts

Found a mistake in this article?

Report it to us.

Thank you for your report!

Leading the fight against payment scams

Next in nation.

Trending in News

Air pollutant index, highest api readings, select state and location to view the latest api reading.

• Select Location

Source: Department of Environment, Malaysia

Others Also Read

Best viewed on Chrome browsers.

We would love to keep you posted on the latest promotion. Kindly fill the form below

Thank you for downloading.

We hope you enjoy this feature!

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Planet Money

• Planet Money Podcast
• The Indicator Podcast
• Planet Money Newsletter Archive
• Planet Money Summer School

• LISTEN & FOLLOW
• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• Amazon Music

Your support helps make our show possible and unlocks access to our sponsor-free feed.

Could the U.S. force treatment on mentally ill people (again)?

Greg Rosalsky

One of the most difficult and expensive questions that a society faces is how to care for those who cannot care for themselves, and how to pay for it. Over the last century, the United States has radically changed how it answers this question when it comes to treating people with severe mental illnesses. Now we appear to be on the brink of another major change.

In the mid-to-late 20th century, America closed most of the country's mental hospitals. The policy has come to be known as deinstitutionalization. Today, it's increasingly blamed for the tragedy that thousands of mentally ill people sleep on our city streets. Wherever you may stand in that debate, the reform began with good intentions and arguably could have gone much differently with more funding.

In October 1963, just weeks before he was assassinated, President John F. Kennedy signed into law landmark legislation that aimed to transform mental healthcare in the United States.

For decades, the United States had locked away people deemed to be mentally ill in asylums. At their height, in 1955, these state-run psychiatric hospitals institutionalized a staggering 558,922 Americans .

Investigative journalists , government officials, and heartbreaking books like 1962's One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest exposed Americans to the horrors of the asylum system and sparked a movement for reform. Meanwhile, new pharmaceuticals like chlorpromazine (also known as Thorazine) burst onto the scene, holding the promise to treat people with mental afflictions without the need for around-the-clock supervision. The asylum system was a massive cost to taxpayers, which helped reformers unite with fiscal conservatives to build a coalition for change.

For President Kennedy, the movement to reform mental healthcare was personal. His younger sister, Rosemary Kennedy, had been born with intellectual disabilities — and her treatment is illustrative of some of the horrors of the asylum era. Kennedy's parents had spent years sending Rosemary to special clinics and allowing doctors to subject her to experiments, like injecting her full of hormones as an adolescent. In 1941, surgeons convinced the Kennedy patriarch, Joseph Kennedy, of the need for a newfangled medical procedure: a lobotomy. The procedure involved cutting out part of Rosemary's brain.

Rosemary's surgery went terribly wrong (even for a lobotomy, which is now a medically suspect and extremely rare procedure). The surgeons removed too much of her frontal lobe. In an instant Rosemary became completely disabled, losing the ability to talk, walk, and control her bodily functions. Fearing embarrassment for his ambitious family, Joe Kennedy had his daughter institutionalized — and he kept his family and the public in the dark about what had really happened to her. It wasn't until 1958 when then-Senator John Kennedy tracked down his sister and secretly paid her a visit. He was shocked by what he found.

Like his sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, who would go on to found the Special Olympics, President Kennedy was inspired by his sister to fight for a better future for people with mental disabilities. And so, in 1963, he signed into law the Community Mental Health Act. The bill provided funding for research into mental disabilities and, more importantly, sought to dismantle the sprawling asylum system. It was the last bill Kennedy would sign into law.

"Under this legislation, custodial mental institutions will be replaced by therapeutic centers," President Kennedy said when he signed the bill into law. "It should be possible, within a decade of two, to reduce the number of patients in mental institutions by 50% or more." In fact, due to this law and other policy changes, by the 2000s, the number of people in asylums would end up plummeting over 90% .

Meanwhile, supporters of civil rights for mentally ill folks won a string of victories in state legislatures and the courts that made it harder to detain and medicate people against their will.

Rather than locking them away in state-run psychiatric hospitals, Kennedy and other reformers hoped to give people with mental illnesses the freedom to live in their communities and receive care from local organizations. However, the Community Mental Health Act failed to provide enough funding for the 1,500 community health centers that lawmakers had initially envisioned. Congress left much of the funding to the states, and, ultimately, only about half of the health centers ended up being built and those that did end up getting created were largely underfunded .

Both in the 1960s as governor of California and in the 1980s as president, Ronald Reagan was an important figure in cutting funding to community health centers. But this was only one part of a broader — and bipartisan — set of actions and inactions that have led to collective neglect for this vulnerable population. One reason may be that people with mental disabilities aren't exactly a powerful voting bloc.

Today, many of those who would historically be institutionalized in asylums are now instead incarcerated in jail, cycling in and out of emergency rooms , and living on the streets. Nowhere is this more clear than the city of Los Angeles, which has a swelling population of homeless people, many of whom suffer from mental illness.

In a new book titled Sons, Daughters, and Sidewalk Psychotics , UC San Diego sociologist Neil Gong grapples with the system of mental healthcare that Los Angeles has adopted in the wake of the closure of asylums.

"With hindsight, the triumph of deinstitutionalization looks more like a tragic irony: an unlikely coalition of civil libertarian liberals and fiscal conservatives pushed for the destruction of an abusive and neglectful system that had nonetheless housed, fed, and organized the lives of over half a million people," Gong writes.

A Crisis Within A Crisis

As we've covered before in this newsletter , research suggests that the homelessness crisis in states like California is primarily a story about housing supply and demand. There's not enough housing for folks who need it. Most of the people facing homelessness are not mentally ill.

However, mental illness is a huge predictor of who becomes homeless — and especially of who stays homeless for a long time. Research estimates that over 20% of Americans experiencing homelessness — and a larger percentage of those experiencing long-term homelessness — suffer from severe mental illnesses.

Gong calls the approach that cities like Los Angeles have taken to this problem "tolerant containment." Basically, the city tolerates things like encampments, bizarre behavior in public, and drug use as long as it's contained in segregated areas that are mostly out of sight of the majority of city residents.

Whether you're a progressive or conservative, especially in California, it's pretty universally accepted that this status quo is not working. It's both inhumane and also surprisingly expensive. Letting this at-risk population languish on the streets imposes a whole bunch of downstream taxpayer costs like repeat emergency room visits , police work, crisis care, and incarceration — none of which measurably improve the long-term outcomes for this population. The question is: what should we do now?

Many progressives have advocated for a "housing first" solution to the problem of homelessness. Basically, they argue, instead of focusing on getting this at-risk population psychiatric help or rehab, the priority should be getting them into stable housing first and then focusing on providing other services. However, Gong suggests, in Los Angeles and other cities, too often the focus has become what you might call housing only. "Because these public or nonprofit providers are under-resourced and understaffed, it kind of ends there," Gong says. This policy sometimes can be effective, he says, but sometimes it means "abandoning people to self-destruct."

A randomized controlled trial conducted in Santa Clara, California, found that providing chronically homeless folks with permanent housing and voluntary supportive services had an 86% success rate in terms of keeping them from returning to living on the streets. This and similar findings by other studies have been hailed by advocates as a slam-dunk validation for the housing first approach to tackling homelessness. But, Gong says, it also suggests there's still a sizable population — the remaining 14 percent — that need more than just housing and access to what's currently available to them for services. In a state like California, which has a massive population of chronically unhoused people, an 86% success rate suggests there would still be thousands of people living on the streets.

"I do believe that if we are able to deliver the kind of community-based services that were promised 60 years ago, we could whittle that number down," Gong says.

However, Gong acknowledges that, even with permanent housing and better quality social and psychiatric services, there would still be some small percentage of folks who would still wind up living on the streets. And for those folks the government, he argues, may need to impose "more assertive or coerced treatment, including even, in some cases, longer-term in-patient care." In other words, a modern, more humane version of a mental asylum or something similar.

For this population who gets forced treatment, Gong stresses, we really need to be careful. He cites research that this sort of compulsory care can be really traumatizing for patients and even result in a greater risk of suicide. "So one thing we really need to figure out how to do is to make the small amount of forced treatment that we might need better."

Reinstitutionalization

We're now at a crossroads where there's a bipartisan movement for what you might call reinstitutionalization. We're not going back to the horrors of lobotomies and forced sterilizations of the asylum era, but a growing number of Democrats and Republicans claim that it's now necessary to use greater force to require treatment for mentally ill folks in the quest to end homelessness.

New York City mayor Eric Adams has for the last couple years pursued a pilot program that gives the police and medical workers the power to involuntarily hospitalize the mentally ill.

Late last year, former president Donald Trump posted a video on his campaign website, remarking , "When I am back in the White House, we will use every tool, lever, and authority to get the homeless off our streets." He continued: "And for those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them back to mental institutions, where they belong... with the goal of reintegrating them back into society once they are well enough to manage."

Recently, California voters narrowly passed Proposition 1, which was championed by Governor Gavin Newsom. Groups like the ACLU opposed this ballot measure on the grounds that it would strip funds from community health organizations and "primarily fund forced treatment and institutionalization."

Neil Gong admits he's fearful that the pendulum is swinging back to a more draconian and less humane approach to how we treat the mentally ill. "I definitely worry that we're going to move to this kind of heavy-handed, lock-people-up, get-them-outta-sight-in-the-cheapest-way-possible approach," Gong says. But, he says, with so much apparent political will to do something about the problem, he maintains hope we can build a better future for some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

• Rosemary Kennedy
• deinstitutionalization
• John Kennedy