By Betsy Hill and Roger Stark
Editor’s Note: This is part two of a three-part series
In the first installment of this series, we examined how mental health challenges affect cognitive skills and how stress and anxiety are impacting K–12 students and educators. Here, we expand on that connection and explore how strengthening cognitive skills can help reduce the learning barriers produced by poor mental wellbeing.
Recent research highlights the severity of the problem. The proportion of American high-school students reporting persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness has risen dramatically over the past decade. At the same time, teacher stress and burnout have increased substantially, with many considering leaving the profession. These trends have immediate consequences for learning: stress and poor mental health impair the cognitive processes essential for academic success.
Stress makes it harder to learn, and learning difficulties increase stress — the relationship goes both ways. Depression, anxiety, PTSD, addiction, sleep disorders, and other mental health issues often carry a cognitive cost: reduced attention, weaker memory, slower processing speed, and impaired executive functions. Even medical treatments such as chemotherapy can affect cognition. Importantly, cognitive effects can persist after symptoms subside, meaning students may not simply “bounce back” once their mood improves.
When a student is depressed or anxious, even routine assignments can feel overwhelming. Reduced cognitive capacity compounds that overwhelm, making it even harder for the student to engage, complete tasks, and benefit from instruction. Recognizing this two-way relationship between cognition and wellbeing opens practical pathways for supporting students.
Addressing the C-Factor
A growing body of literature describes a “cognitive price” associated with mental disorders and symptoms such as worry and anxiety. The shorthand for this is the C-Factor — cognitive dysfunction that lowers performance on tasks requiring memory, attention, processing speed, and executive control. Even modest declines in these cognitive skills can have outsized effects on academic outcomes. The C-Factor helps explain why students with mental health challenges struggle disproportionately in learning environments.
The encouraging news is that cognitive skills can be strengthened. Structured cognitive training targets attention, working memory, processing speed, and other core skills. By directly addressing the C-Factor, such training can reduce the cognitive barriers to learning and improve academic performance. In some cases, enhancing cognitive capacity also eases anxiety and other symptoms, creating a positive feedback loop between improved cognition and better wellbeing.
Historically, schools have focused primarily on treating or accommodating the mental health condition itself, while overlooking its secondary cognitive effects. But treating symptoms alone may leave a student with lingering cognitive weaknesses that continue to limit learning. Integrating cognitive skills training with mental health supports provides a more complete approach: it treats the condition and rebuilds the cognitive capacity that students need to succeed in the classroom.
At its best, modern cognitive training looks like a set of engaging, game-like activities that are grounded in neuroscience and designed to strengthen specific cognitive processes. For learners whose cognitive capacity has been reduced by stress or other mental health challenges, these interventions can replenish and expand mental bandwidth, with benefits that extend beyond school to college, work, and daily life.
Too often, mental health has been treated as secondary to physical health in educational settings. That must change. If a student with a broken bone would receive immediate care and accommodation, students suffering from depression, anxiety, or other mental health issues deserve the same recognition and practical supports. The C-Factor reframes these conditions as direct barriers to learning and underscores the need for proactive, evidence-informed responses.
As our understanding of the brain grows, so does our ability to apply effective tools and strategies in schools. Addressing mental health, physical safety, and cognitive consequences together will produce better academic results and healthier graduates. Given the scale of the current crisis — marked by rising student sadness and significant teacher attrition — schools need scalable, research-based approaches that both support wellbeing and restore cognitive capacity. Quality cognitive skills training offers one tangible strategy to start reversing the damage and delivering measurable benefits for students and educators alike.
Coming in the final installment: In our third and final piece, we will examine the current state of mental wellness in schools and outline the personnel, programs, and practices that can and should be added to support students and staff.
About the authors
Betsy Hill is President of BrainWare Learning Company, which develops tools to build learning capacity through applied neuroscience. An experienced educator, she has studied the intersection of neuroscience and education and has served on university boards and taught in graduate programs. She holds a Master of Arts in Teaching and an MBA.
Roger Stark is Co-founder and CEO of BrainWare Learning Company. For more than a decade he has worked to make comprehensive cognitive skills training and assessment widely available. He led development of BrainWare SAFARI, a researched, integrated online cognitive training tool designed to strengthen the core cognitive skills that support learning.
This article was originally published by The Learning Counsel, a research institute and news organization focused on the shift in education to digital curriculum.