System Mapping of School-Based Prevention: A Comparison of Strategic Documents and School Staff Perspectives

Schools can play a key role in mental health prevention, reaching most children during critical periods. Many national prevention
strategies therefore describe a range of schoolbased activities and outcomes. However, in reality, prevention at schools arises from a complex system of various stakeholders and flows of policies, funding, and information.

To enable systematic improvement of schoolbased prevention, we created and compared two system maps: an observed system map based on workshops with school staff and a prescribed system map based on analysis of strategic documents.