School mental health has increasingly been framed as a systems-level challenge that requires close collaboration between researchers and practitioners to develop contextually grounded interventions, rather than merely importing clinic-based models into schools (Lawson & Owens, 2024). Recent work in this field has called for more rigorous, staged approaches to intervention development that explicitly account for implementation constraints, routine school practices, and the limited time and attention of school staff (Evans & Bakhtiari, 2024). At the policy level, discussions about how to deploy federal and state funding emphasize the need to invest in supports that are both scalable and sustainable, avoiding initiatives that overburden already stretched student-support infrastructures (Hoover, 2024). National learning collaboratives with state and local teams have shown that structured capacity building can improve some components of school mental health systems, but they have also revealed substantial variability in local uptake, suggesting a need for simple, low-intensity design innovations that make it easier and less stigmatizing for students to approach help in the first place (Bohnenkamp et al., 2024).

 

In parallel, research on soundscapes, environmental design, and privacy has provided converging evidence that the physical and sensory qualities of indoor spaces shape how people cope with stress and how willing they are to remain engaged in a setting. Studies on open-plan offices have shown that indoor soundscape perception is closely related to perceived work quality, privacy, satisfaction, and task performance (Indrani et al., 2023; Jeon et al., 2022). Related research has further indicated that open-plan office noise can increase stress responses, while insufficient privacy and acoustic disturbance are major sources of workspace dissatisfaction (Kim & de Dear, 2013; Sander et al., 2021). Indoor soundscape models from university open-plan offices have shown that contextual acoustic factors systematically influence perceived supportiveness and cognitive load, indicating that sound environments can be intentionally designed rather than treated as mere background conditions (Indrani et al., 2023). Experimental and applied studies of sound masking have suggested that tailored acoustic strategies can help noise-sensitive individuals, including users with autism, manage overload and maintain functional participation (Park et al., 2024), and can mitigate the adverse impact of intrusive environmental noise on perceived soundscapes (Wu & Zhao, 2024). Work in services and retail contexts has further demonstrated that well-fitted ambient music shapes affective appraisals and approach-oriented behavior, highlighting the behavioral impact of subtle auditory atmospheres (Jin, 2024). Studies of visual privacy and privacy control in digital and assisted-living environments have stressed that perceived control over being seen is central to feelings of safety, dignity, and willingness to engage (Amano et al., 2024; Ravi et al., 2023).

 

Although previous studies have explored sensory rooms, calming spaces, and wellness centers in educational or therapeutic contexts (Clément et al., 2022; Moya et al., 2022; Unwin et al., 2021), these insights have rarely been systematically translated into the design of school-based well-being rooms or informal support spaces. In particular, little empirical work has examined whether specific combinations of spatial privacy, multisensory calming cues, and ambient therapeutic music jointly influence students’ willingness to seek help. We conducted a quasiexperimental study to address this gap by examining how a purpose-designed supportive well-being room in a public junior secondary school influences students’ help-seeking willingness compared with a standard classroom environment. Our hypotheses were as follows:

Hypothesis 1: An intervention group using a purpose-designed supportive well-being room in a public junior secondary school will report higher posttest help-seeking willingness than a comparison group without access to this room.

Hypothesis 2: Public junior secondary school students’ increase in help-seeking willingness from pretest to posttest will be greater in the intervention group than in the comparison group.

Hypothesis 3: Controlling for baseline levels, perceived spatial privacy and multisensory calming cues will positively predict posttest help-seeking willingness.

Hypothesis 4: Within the intervention group, perceived spatial privacy and positive evaluation of ambient therapeutic music will positively predict posttest help-seeking willingness.

This study was conducted in a public junior secondary school located in China. The school serves a mixed catchment of urban and periurban communities and has an established but understaffed school mental health support system, primarily consisting of a full-time school counselor and several trained homeroom teachers. Two Grade 7 classes were invited to participate based on administrative feasibility and timetable compatibility.

 

The sample comprised 80 students, with one intact class assigned to the intervention condition and the other to the comparison condition. The intervention group (n = 40) had a mean age of 13.10 years (SD = 0.63) and included 21 boys and 19 girls, while the comparison group (n = 40) had a mean age of 13.00 years (SD = 0.59) and included 20 boys and 20 girls.

Prior to commencing data collection, we obtained written informed consent from parents or guardians, and secured student assent in age-appropriate language. All procedures were reviewed and approved by the ethics committee of our institution and were implemented in accordance with national and school-level regulations for research involving minors. We employed a quasiexperimental, two-group pretest–posttest design to examine the impact of a purpose-designed supportive well-being room on students’ help-seeking willingness. No changes were made to the existing curriculum or assessment schedule, and the well-being sessions were embedded into noncore periods to minimize disruption to regular teaching. The intervention group attended weekly sessions in the supportive well-being room for 6 consecutive weeks, while the comparison group attended parallel sessions of the same duration in an unmodified standard classroom. Both groups followed the same broad structure in terms of timing, session length (approximately 20 minutes), and low-demand activities, in order to isolate the influence of environmental features rather than structured psychosocial content or counselor-led interventions. The supportive well-being room was arranged to enhance students’ sense of privacy and comfort through visual shielding, calming lighting, comfortable seating, and low-volume ambient therapeutic music.

 

At Week 0, all participating students completed a baseline questionnaire during class time, assessing help-seeking willingness and demographic items. Following the baseline assessment, each class began its assigned condition. At the end of Week 6, students completed the posttest questionnaire, which repeated the help-seeking willingness measure and added items assessing perceptions of spatial privacy and multisensory calming cues. Students in the intervention group also rated their perception of the ambient music. Surveys were completed anonymously using self-generated codes, allowing pretest and posttest responses to be matched without collecting names or student identification numbers.

The help-seeking willingness measure captured students’ intention and attitude toward accessing school-based mental health support. Items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), and scores were averaged to yield a composite index, with higher scores indicating stronger willingness to seek help. A sample item is “If I felt emotionally distressed at school, I would be willing to seek help from a teacher or school counselor.” Perceptions of spatial privacy were measured with items targeting students’ sense of being visually shielded from corridors and peers, perceived control over being observed, and perceived ability to have semiprivate conversations. We evaluated multisensory calming cues through items reflecting the calming quality of lighting, color, furniture comfort, and overall soundscape. For the intervention group only, additional items assessed the pleasantness, perceived fit, and calming effect of the ambient therapeutic music. All scales were pilot tested in a small group of nonparticipating students from the same school to check clarity and response range before formal data collection.

We first screened the data for completeness, outliers, and normality assumptions prior to inferential analysis. Descriptive statistics were calculated to summarize demographic characteristics and baseline levels of help-seeking willingness for each group. To test the primary intervention effect on help-seeking willingness, we conducted a 2 (group: intervention vs. comparison) × 2 (time: pretest vs. posttest) mixed analysis of variance. Between-group differences in perceived spatial privacy and multisensory calming cues at posttest were analyzed using independent samples t tests. We conducted multiple regression analyses to assess the extent to which perceived spatial privacy, multisensory calming cues, and—for the intervention group—ambient music ratings predicted posttest help-seeking willingness after controlling for baseline levels.

As shown in Table 1, the two groups were comparable at baseline in terms of help-seeking willingness, suggesting initial equivalence. At posttest, the intervention group showed a higher mean level of help-seeking willingness than the comparison group. In terms of environmental perceptions, students assigned to the supportive well-being room reported higher perceived spatial privacy and stronger multisensory calming cues than students in the standard classroom, indicating that the intervention successfully created a distinct environmental experience. Independent samples t tests confirmed that students in the supportive well-being room reported significantly higher perceived spatial privacy than those in the comparison classroom, t(78) = 8.77, p < .001. A similar pattern was observed for multisensory calming cues, with students in the intervention group reporting significantly stronger calming environmental cues than those in the comparison group, t(78) = 8.64, p < .001.

Results of the 2 (group: intervention vs. comparison) × 2 (time: pretest vs. posttest) mixed analysis of variance are presented in Table 2. There was a significant main effect of time, indicating that help-seeking willingness increased from pretest to posttest across the sample. The main effect of group was also significant, suggesting that, overall, the intervention group reported higher levels of help-seeking willingness than the comparison group. The group × time interaction was significant, showing that students in the supportive well-being room condition experienced a larger gain in help-seeking willingness across the 6-week period than students in the standard classroom, consistent with the hypothesized intervention effect.

As shown in Table 3, the multiple regression model including all students (Model 1) accounted for 49% of the variance in posttest help-seeking willingness. Baseline help-seeking willingness emerged as a strong positive predictor, indicating that students who were more willing to seek help at pretest tended to remain more willing at posttest. Beyond baseline levels, perceived spatial privacy and multisensory calming cues each made significant, positive contributions, suggesting that students who experienced the room as more private and calming reported higher postintervention willingness to seek support. For the intervention group only (Model 2), the model explained 58% of the variance in posttest help-seeking willingness, with pretest help-seeking, perceived spatial privacy, and ambient music evaluation emerging as significant predictors, whereas multisensory cues as a global construct did not reach significance.

This study’s finding that a supportive well-being room increased students’ willingness to seek school-based help is consistent with recent research indicating that many school systems still face substantial gaps in accessible and youth-friendly mental health services and therefore require low-threshold, context-embedded supports rather than relying solely on traditional counseling models (Orenstein et al., 2024). From an implementation perspective, adapting the physical and sensory environment can be viewed as a feasible environmental innovation that aligns with current efforts to develop practical and scalable school mental health interventions (Lyon et al., 2024). Such environmental approaches may also reduce coordination pressures on school staff by creating earlier self-initiated entry points for students seeking support (Lindstrom Johnson et al., 2024; Nygaard et al., 2024).

 

Our findings regarding soundscape-related features extend previous evidence showing that well-designed acoustic environments can reduce distraction and support coping and restoration (Bergefurt et al., 2024; Fei et al., 2025). In addition, the positive role of ambient therapeutic music that we observed is consistent with research demonstrating background music can influence emotional arousal and promote approach-oriented behavior in applied settings (Biswas et al., 2019; Kiss et al., 2024). Finally, the importance of perceived spatial privacy aligns with architectural research indicating that visual shielding and controllable exposure support sensitive interactions, which may enhance students’ psychological readiness to access help (Sheikhi Nashalji & Mehdizadeh Saradj, 2025; Yenel Güler & Demirkan, 2024).

At the theoretical level, this study framed well-being rooms as an active environmental intervention, showing that help-seeking willingness is not only a function of individual attitudes or stigma, but also of how spatial privacy, multisensory calming cues, and ambient music jointly signal psychological safety. The strong predictive roles of perceived privacy and curated soundscapes suggest a specific environmental pathway within school help-seeking models, extending environmental psychology and soundscape research into the school mental health domain. In practical terms, schools can enhance students’ readiness to seek support not only by adding staff or programs, but also by making targeted, low-cost design adjustments (e.g., improving visual shielding, softening sensory inputs, and introducing unobtrusive therapeutic music) to transform existing rooms into low-threshold, student-friendly entry points for mental health care.

Several limitations should be acknowledged. First, the use of a quasiexperimental design with intact classes in a single school limits our ability to draw causal inferences and affects the generalizability of the results. Future research could address this by employing randomized or multisite designs. Second, the modest sample size and short follow-up period make it unclear whether increased help-seeking willingness persists or translates into actual behavior. Future studies could address this limitation by employing larger multisite samples and extending the follow-up period across several months or academic semesters. Longitudinal designs would allow researchers to examine whether changes in help-seeking willingness are sustained over time and whether they eventually lead to observable help-seeking behaviors, such as contacting counselors, using mental health services, or seeking support from teachers and peers. Third, all variables were self-reported, and potential mechanisms (e.g., perceived privacy, emotional regulation, or stigma) were not directly examined. Future studies could combine self-report measures with behavioral indicators, institutional service-use records, observational data, or follow-up interviews to provide stronger evidence of actual behavioral change. In addition, future research could test possible mediating mechanisms, such as perceived privacy, emotional safety, reduced stigma, and emotional regulation, to clarify how supportive well-being room design influences students’ help-seeking willingness and behavior. Finally, because the intervention combined multiple environmental features, the specific contribution of each element remains unclear. Future studies could use dismantling designs or qualitative approaches to clarify how environmental features influence students’ help-seeking willingness.

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