There is clear evidence that children of mentally ill parents are at higher risk to develop mental and behavioral disorders than other children [1]. A multifactorial interplay between genetic vulnerabilities and psychosocial and socio-structural strains is considered to cause the emergence of mental disorders in these children and, in turn, offers opportunities to target the trans-generational transfer of mental disorders with primary preventive and health promoting measures [2,3]. In Germany e.g., it is estimated that over 3 million children and adolescents experience every year at least one parent with a mental disorder. This is about a quarter of the students [4]. The quality and severity of psychological and social stress factors show high variability and result from the burdens that the children are faced with in everyday living when parental disorders become apparent. Disorientation, feelings of guilt, taboo, stigmatization, isolation, care deficits and additional burdens such as taking care of household chores are particularly prevalent. In addition, these children often assume the tasks of providing care, hence parental tasks (parentification), and put their own needs aside. They are thus urged into inverted role relationships [1,5,6].

The different burden patterns and attempts at coping often become manifest in children's school lives. While some children may react with withdrawal and a drop in achievement, others may become aggressive or display behavioral problems. Lack of sleep, poor concentration, learning lags, and absence from school may impair their school life. Not least because the deviation from typical family norms that characterize the family arrangement causes social isolation, anxiety, and shame. Developmental problems that already emerge in childhood are also particular sources of school-related problems [7,8]. This specific risk dimension resulting from a parental mental disorder includes a higher risk of experiencing a "school handicap", i.e., of being excluded from regular schools once a special need of support has been observed [9,10]. It is evident that these loading factors increase the probability of having a problematic educational biography.

In this context, schools can have an important protective function, but can also create risk potentials. In the school setting, however, there is an at best informal awareness of this problem; teachers do not possess the necessary professional skills to adequately respond to this particularly burdened life situation, yet [9]. They are rarely able to decode such phenomena as symptoms of a special risk situation. Even with a benevolent attitude, they rarely dispose of the means necessary to provide adequate individual support, so that teachers remain in a state of suspense which involves precedent decisions of individual attention [11]. It is evident that such a practice of support is insufficient for children in special life situations. There is a serious gap in opportunities and participation that results from teachers' insufficient competences in dealing with special target groups. The ability of teachers to handle special requirements caused by divergent conditions in the pupil population has for some time been viewed as a particular challenge to profession development [12]. So far, there has been no access to the school setting to promote the mental health literacy of teachers and thus enhance the primary preventive and health-promoting potentials of children. To target the adults' mental health literacy with respect to issues of child health is novel in the debate on health promotion at school and can help to fill important gaps. Here, we present a further education and training program for teachers and educators that was developed and tested in order to approach these gaps.

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