The Protective Paradox: Can School Connectedness Buffer Socioeconomic Disparities in Adolescent Mental Health?

Introduction Socioeconomic status (SES) is a well-established factor influencing adolescents' mental health, as young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to experience stress, anxiety, and poorer overall wellbeing. One factor that may help protect students from these negative outcomes is school connectedness which is the feeling of belonging, support, and positive relationships within the school environment. Although school connectedness is known to promote healthier psychological development, it remains unclear whether it can specifically reduce mental health inequalities linked to SES, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Methods This study interrogates a critical gap in resilience theory: Can school connectedness effectively buffer the psychological consequences of socioeconomic disadvantage in resource-constrained environments? Through a cross-sectional design involving 535 Nigerian adolescents (mean age = 13.25 years; 53.6% female), we employed psychometrically validated measures including the California Healthy Kids Survey (school connectedness), WHO-5 Wellbeing Index, and Kessler-6 Psychological Distress Scale. Results Result shows that school connectedness significantly predicted enhanced wellbeing (β = 1.98, p < 0.001) and reduced distress (β = -0.73, p = 0.001), but did not moderate the SES-mental health relationship. This result challenges conventional assumptions in resilience frameworks and raises crucial questions about the contextual limits of school-based protective factors in LMIC settings. Conclusions The study makes three key contributions: (1) empirical evidence from an understudied Global South context, (2) theoretical contribution to the resilience models, and (3) practical implications for designing multi-level mental health interventions in resource-constrained educational systems.