A Review of Research on the Relationship Between Boarding School and Mental Health

This review surveys existing data on the relationship between boarding school attendance and mental health outcomes. Many families all over the world choose to send their children to boarding school. Given the current youth mental health crisis, understanding how different educational and parental decisions influence the mental health outcomes of children is extremely important. We review 13 empirical studies on how boarders and non-boarders differ in mental health outcomes. There are three types of study we found in our review: cross-sectional studies, which compared boarders to non-boarders at a single point in time,, cross-sectional longitudinal studies, which compared boarders to non-boarders across multiple time points, and non-comparison surveys, which surveyed boarders only. Taken as a whole, the data show a significant negative relationship between boarding and mental health outcomes, including depression, anxiety, and loneliness. Whether or not a causal relationship exists is less clear from the data. We consider, based on the sample, a number of candidates for causal explanations, including parental alienation, bullying, loneliness, and academic stress. We conclude that, while there is some indication that boarding increases parental alienation, bullying, and academic stress, more studies are required to establish a firm causal relationship between boarding and negative mental health outcomes.