The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
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UNC School of Medicine

Tealeaf

Program Overview

Tealeaf stands for Teachers Leading the Frontlines – Mental Health. The program leverages existing community resources and extends their roles to address mental health. This model is called community initiated care (CIC). In North Carolina, the project team uses the CIC model to train and equip teachers with knowledge and skills to address mental health in real-time, class-based settings. They use techniques distilled from evidence-based therapies, which are reformatted for use in the classroom.

Program Impact

An educator leads diverse students in a classroom lessonMany communities want to address youth mental health in a meaningful way. Yet they also lack enough trained professionals to meet the demand for services. Tealeaf helps change that narrative and engages existing community resources to meet the challenge. This program first launched in 2011 in Darjeeling, India and the Suicide Prevention Institute brought it to North Carolina in 2022. In Tealeaf, teachers first understand mental health through behavior theory and think of needs (attention, escape, sensory, tangible) instead of diagnoses. When they identify student needs, teachers choose from a list of options on how to interact with students to meet those behavioral needs. This approach empowers teachers to advocate for youth who have mental health concerns.

  • Tealeaf increases access to mental health care for all children by integrating it into their classrooms every day.
  • Teachers learn to use Education as Mental Health Therapy (Ed-MH) techniques in their interactions—it is based on behavior theory, which removes the need to know diagnoses and allows use of transdiagnostic measures to address mental health.
  • The program works with schools in several regions of North Carolina and across socioeconomic statuses.
  • The project team is 100% minority, from varied ethnic backgrounds, religions, gender identity, and orientation.
  • Tealeaf improves working conditions for teachers by giving them the tools to support all students, leading to higher self-efficacy and lower burn out.
  • The program has trained six schools in one of two forms of Tealeaf, reaching over 50 school staff.