THE SCHOOL PSYCHOLOGIST AS A PROFESSIONALLY GUARANTEED COMPONENT OF PRIMARY AND SECONDARY SCHOOLS FROM THE MEDIATION OF SCHOOL CONFLICTS TO SYSTEMIC CARE FOR STUDENTS’ MENTAL HEALTH

Abstrakt

The present article aims to analyze the school psychologist as a professionally guaranteed and institutionally stable component of primary and secondary schools, to develop the argument for systemic rather than reactive care for students’ mental health, and to delineate the professional scope of school conflict mediation within the broader school counseling framework. The study employs a conceptual-analytical approach integrating three complementary sources of evidence: (1) a selective review of current Czech and international empirical literature, encompassing national monitoring data, regional surveys, meta-analyses of school-based mental health interventions, and large-scale international datasets from the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022; (2) theoretical analysis grounded in the NASP practice model of school psychology and the whole-school approach; and (3) the authors’ reflective applied professional experience comprising 72 school conflict mediations conducted in the Ústí nad Labem Region (Ústecký kraj). The analysis yielded four principal sets of findings. (1) Czech epidemiological data from 2023 to 2025 document that more than 50% of ninth-grade primary school students exhibit signs of impaired wellbeing (i.e., subjective psychological well-being), 40% show signs of moderate to severe depression, 30% show signs of moderate to severe anxiety, and 51.2% of Prague school students report having no trusted adult at school to whom they could confide their problems. (2) The availability of school psychological services constitutes a structural problem rooted in insufficient financing, regional inequality, limited workforce supply, and competition from healthsector and private-sector employment. (3) School conflict mediation represents a legitimate yet inherently limited instrument that is unsuitable for situations involving psychological crisis, self-harm, suicidal risk, traumatization, or suspected child maltreatment. (4) The school psychologist fulfills five interconnected functional domains: individual student support, work with classroom groups, methodological guidance for educators, collaboration with parents, and coordination of follow-up services. The findings confirm that Czech primary and secondary schools require stably funded, qualification-guaranteed, and methodologically supported access to school psychological services whose organizational model is differentiated according to school size, regional conditions, and the level of student needs. The school psychologist should be understood not as an optional supplementary resource but as a professionally guaranteed partner enabling the transition from reactive incident management to proactive, datainformed, and ethically grounded care for students’ mental health. The conclusions underscore the necessity of stable systemic financing, quality assurance through supervision and continuing professional development, and evidencebased monitoring of service outcomes.