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Mental health problems among children present an important public health issue worldwide. Early detection, assessment, and support in schools might have a significant impact on mental health outcomes and child health and wellbeing. The purpose of this article is to show the mental health support system and its historical transition in Japan. In general, Japanese schools have a Yogo teacher (a school nurse) who works full time, as well as three types of mental health specialists who work part time: school counselors, advisors, and social workers. The regularity of visits from the three types of specialists depends on schools and regions. In general, school counselors visit schools more often than do other specialists, for approximately 4 h per week. The other specialists either visit the schools rarely or not at all because they are sometimes not hired. The strengths of the Japanese system included much provision of psychological consultations and a small budget compared to Western countries. Almost all school counselors are clinical psychologists with master's degrees who are skillful at handling students' mental problems. Moreover, they are capable of providing intensive psychological counseling in school settings in Japan. The weakness is that there is no specialist available who supports students' academic or school life. General teachers take on the role of the Western countries' "school counselors." There are also few specialists who can be approached for social support compared to Western countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School‐based mental health interventions are considered to have potential for the promotion of mental health in developing countries. We held a workshop to discuss the promotion of mental health in schools in southeast Asian countries. This review report aimed to summarize the current situation of school mental health in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries as reported by their representatives in this workshop. To summarize the current situation of ASEAN countries in relation to school mental health, we qualitatively analyzed the content of the discussions from four perspectives: (i) laws and regulations: (ii) mental health services; (iii) teacher training on mental health; (iv) mental health education for students. With regard to school mental health laws and regulations, this report could not provide clear conclusions because the laws were reported through the personal understanding of the public officers. Our results show that mental health services in schools are centered on professionals such as guidance counselors, although the coverage varied among the different ASEAN countries. Only Singapore conducted mental health training for teachers in a comprehensive way, and the number of people who were actually trained in other countries was very limited. Cambodia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand included mental health education for students in health education or life skills subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]