Sheet of VACHER Sidonie

Thesis defended on 5 December 2025 (University of Lyon 2, ECP)

Thesis supervisor: Gilles COMBAZ (Professor, University of Lyon 2)
Co-supervisor: Frédérique GIULIANI (Senior Lecturer and Research Fellow, University of Geneva).
Thesis title: Mental health: an indisputable issue? An investigation into the unspoken assumptions underpinning a framework for public policy in schools

Keywords: mental health; adolescents; school-related deviance; sociology of public policy

Thesis abstract:
Our doctoral research falls within the field of the sociology of public policy and examines how the dominant conception of mental health, as it has become institutionalised in contemporary Western societies, shapes educational practice within French lower secondary schools. The study begins with the observation that mental health has become a universal framework, inextricably linked to the emergence of a ‘capability-based individualism ’ (Ehrenberg, 2022), which prioritises the individual’s capacity to act independently. Within this cultural context, mental health has simultaneously established itself as the standard language for expressing difficulties, as capital that each person must cultivate by working on their psychological self, and as a major resource for societal functioning and for individuals’ adaptation to the constraints of their environment.

The triad of mental health, responsibility and social adaptation therefore constitutes a cognitive and normative framework that shapes all public policies. Mental health issues permeate education policies, in the form of a reinterpretation – applied to the school sector – of the overarching framework for mental health. In this sphere of public policy, well-being serves as a lever for academic performance. The prevailing education policy on mental health prioritises equipping pupils individually with self-management and self-control skills, presented as the most effective way of addressing both their psychological vulnerabilities and their difficulties in adapting to school.
The Our doctoral research aims to examine the interconnection between mental health, social adaptation and individual responsibility, through the lens of the unconsidered aspects that this may give rise to in public education policy.
The analyses presented in this report are based on a mixed-methods study combining ethnographic observations of school staff at a secondary school within the Reinforced Priority Education Network (REP+) and 1,107 valid questionnaires, administered in class to pupils at four socially diverse French secondary schools.
We argue that this cultural and institutional framing of mental health tends: 1) to render unthinkable adolescents’ experiences of distress that coexist with the absence – or subtlety – of signs of academic maladjustment; 2) to promote an ‘imperialism’ of mental health categories in education professionals’ understanding and management of issues relating to academic deviance, thereby contributing to the marginalisation of a sociological understanding – particularly in terms of social determinism – of underachievement and misbehaviour at school.

Curriculum vitae actualisé en septembre 2025