Students’ experiences with school reintegration after psychiatric hospitalization: a scoping review

Students with severe mental health issues may require inpatient psychiatric care, requiring them to leave school temporarily. For a myriad of reasons, reintegration back into the classroom after mental health hospitalization is often difficult and can put students at heightened risk for readmission and exacerbation of psychiatric symptoms. Unfortunately, there is a lack of understanding of students’ experiences with this hospital-to-school transition. This scoping review aimed to identify factors that students perceived to be facilitators and barriers to school reintegration. This scoping review followed the methodological framework outlined by Arksey and O’Malley and Levac et al. Ten documents were included in the final review. Study characteristics, key demographics, and students’ perceived facilitators and barriers to school reintegration after psychiatric hospitalization were extracted, and the latter were examined using deductive content analysis. We employed the ecological systems theory as a framework for this analysis. This scoping review identified four factors that students perceived as both facilitators and barriers in their transition back to school: psychiatric symptomology, connection to peers, connection to school adults, and academic planning and accommodations, and two factors students perceived to be distinct facilitators: caregivers as advocates and school mental health supports. Findings are limited by a lack of peer-reviewed research in this area. Further research that includes students at all stages of education is needed, especially those attending postsecondary institutions.