Impact of a mental health teaching programme on adolescents

Abstract

Teaching 14- and 15-year-olds about mental health difficulties helps to reduce stigma by increasing knowledge and promoting positive attitudes. The intervention also reduced self-reported conduct problems and increased prosocial behaviour. Generally, participating pupils were positive about the importance of lessons on mental health, and said that they had learnt much about the lesson topics.

Young people’s perceptions of mental and physical health in the context of general wellbeing

“…The few studies that have conducted mid-term follow-up (3-12 months after the intervention) report conflicting results. Naylor et al, (2009) (Naylor et al, 2009) reported an improvement in factual knowledge (the ability to name five mental health difficulties) measured six months after their intervention whereas Pinfold et al (2003) (Pinfold et al, 2003) found that factual recall of information about mental health problems was lost after six months. Both studies did find that attitude improvements were maintained.…”

“…Other school-based interventions taking place over a slightly longer period (5-6 lessons) have also led to improvements in knowledge and attitudes (Naylor et al, 2009;Watson et al, 2004) and it is possible that a more sustained intervention over a longer period would have shown a greater broadening of attitudes here. Whether the changes in knowledge and attitude are sustained over time is largely unknown and underexplored (Wyn et al, 2000).…”

“…'Health'-related responses were mostly related to eating and exercise whereas 'mental'-related responses were usually associated with mental illness despite the question being about mental health. Such a focus on illness rather than the absence of illness could be a reflection of the stigma often associated with mental illness ( (Naylor et al, 2009;Corrigan and Watson, 2007) and others) or poor mental health literacy ((Friedli, 1999;Watson et al, 2004;Armstrong et al, 2000) and others). The positive versus negative views of mental and physical health in this study are explored in more depth in Svirydzenka et al (2014).…”

“…However, there has been little research into the effectiveness of interventions educating about mental health, despite relatively high levels of negative attitudes in young people and adults in the UK ((Friedli, 1999;Watson et al, 2004;Armstrong et al, 2000) and others). Additionally, little is known about how young people perceive mental health and health in general, in regards to themselves and others, but it has been suggested that their perceptions of mental health differ from those expected by adults and policy makers (Naylor et al, 2009). A limited amount of research has shown views of health to be broader than just physical health for United States (US) (Ott et al, 2011;Natapoff, 1978), Australian (Ward and Wang, 1997) and Chinese (Wang, 2004) young people, but assessment of unprompted beliefs about health remains relatively understudied.…”

Comprehensive School Mental Health: An integrated “School-Based Pathway to Care” model for Canadian secondary schools

“…Beyondblue Schools and MindMattters) that embed mental health as a component of other health-promoting activities have been successful in improving knowledge and changing attitudes among youth (Kelly, Jorm, & Wright, 2007). Improved mental health literacy can also play an important role in stigma reduction (Naylor, Cowie, Walters, Talamelli, & Dawkins, 2009;Pinfold et al, 2005). Despite its importance however, Canada is lacking a systematic mental health literacy strategy to guide related activities in schools (Canadian Alliance on Mental Illness and Mental Health, 2007).…”