Ahead of the game protocol: a multi-component, community sport-based program targeting prevention, promotion and early intervention for mental health among adolescent males

Abstract

BackgroundThere is a recognised need for targeted community-wide mental health strategies and interventions aimed specifically at prevention and early intervention in promoting mental health. Young males are a high need group who hold particularly negative attitudes towards mental health services, and these views are detrimental for early intervention and help-seeking. Organised sports provide a promising context to deliver community-wide mental health strategies and interventions to adolescent males. The aim of the Ahead of the Game program is to test the effectiveness of a multi-component, community-sport based program targeting prevention, promotion and early intervention for mental health among adolescent males.MethodsThe Ahead of the Game program will be implemented within a sample drawn from community sporting clubs and evaluated using a sample drawn from a matched control community. Four programs are proposed, including two targeting adolescents, one for parents, and one for sports coaches. One adolescent program aims to increase mental health literacy, intentions to seek and/or provide help for mental health, and to decrease stigmatising attitudes. The second adolescent program aims to increase resilience. The goal of the parent program is to increase parental mental health literacy and confidence to provide help. The coach program is intended to increase coaches’ supportive behaviours (e.g., autonomy supportive behaviours), and in turn facilitate high-quality motivation and wellbeing among adolescents. Programs will be complemented by a messaging campaign aimed at adolescents to enhance mental health literacy. The effects of the program on adolescent males’ psychological distress and wellbeing will also be explored.DiscussionOrganised sports represent a potentially engaging avenue to promote mental health and prevent the onset of mental health problems among adolescent males. The community-based design, with samples drawn from an intervention and a matched control community, enables evaluation of adolescent males’ incremental mental health literacy, help-seeking intentions, stigmatising attitudes, motivation, and resilience impacts from the multi-level, multi-component Ahead of the Game program. Notable risks to the study include self-selection bias, the non-randomised design, and the translational nature of the program. However, strengths include extensive community input, as well as the multi-level and multi-component design.Trial registrationAustralian New Zealand Clinical Trials Registry ACTRN12617000709347. Date registered 17 May 2017. Retrospectively registered.

An Intervention for Mental Health Literacy and Resilience in Organized Sports

“…The overall program and each intervention component are described in detail within the study protocol ( 23 ). Adolescents were invited to take part in a brief team-based, face-to-face mental health literacy workshop named “Help Out a Mate.” The Help Out a Mate workshop was usually delivered after a routine scheduled practice and took approximately 45 min.…”

“…One item from the Mental Health Literacy Scale ( 41 ) was retained to measure confidence to seek mental health information. Other measures related to athlete motivation, engagement and burnout, and parent- and coach-level data were collected in line with the study protocol ( 23 ) and will be reported separately. Similarly, the qualitative components of the evaluation will also be reported separately (e.g., Ref.…”

“…In this article, we report the results pertaining to athlete-level data, whereas coach and parent data are reported elsewhere. We hypothesized that, compared with adolescents from sports clubs in a control community, adolescents who participated in the intervention would show increases in the primary outcomes of mental health literacy, intentions to seek and provide help, resilience, and a decrease in stigmatizing attitudes ( 23 ). We also hypothesized increases among athletes in the intervention group for the secondary outcomes of perceived familial support and implicit beliefs regarding one’s ability to deal with problems when compared with athletes in the control group.…”

Developing young men’s wellbeing through community and school-based programs: A systematic review

“…It stands to reason then, that interventions specifically addressing, or incorporating masculinity-based factors, may have greater acceptability, engagement, and impact with populations of boys and young men [22]. Such approaches include community-based rite of passage experiences that seek to foster healthy identity development and maturity [23, 24], and sports-based approaches leveraging aspects of masculinity, as well as key role models and influencers [25].…”

The effectiveness of an online multimodal intervention for mental health promotion: A randomised controlled trial

“…[14] Over the past few decades, numerous evidence-based strategies for improving mental health and emotional wellness have emerged in the literature underpinning the disciplines of "Lifestyle Medicine" and "Positive Psychology". [15][16][17][18] Lifestyle Medicine has historically focused on the prevention, management and reversal of chronic diseases through the promotion of exercise, a healthy diet, and sleep, [16,[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] however, there is growing evidence that these lifestyle practices also have positive benefits on mental health. [9,[27][28][29][30][31] For example, considerable literature is showing that dietary interventions can be used as an effective treatment strategy for depression.…”