Promotion of Mental Health Literacy in Adolescents: A Scoping Review.

Francisco Monteiro,Carlos Sequeira,Ana Paula Oliveira,Joana Nobre,Carme Ferré-Grau

doi:10.3390/ijerph18189500

Abstract

In recent years, there has been an important commitment to the development of programs to promote mental health literacy (MHL) among adolescents, due to the prevalence of mental health problems and the low level of MHL that affects this group. The aim of this study was to map the structure and context of programmes/interventions for promoting MHL among adolescents in school settings. A scoping review was conducted following the guidelines of The Joanna Briggs Institute. We searched for studies on programmes/interventions promoting at least one of the components of MHL of adolescents, written in Portuguese, English or Spanish, published from 2013 to 2020, in MEDLINE, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, SciELO, SCOPUS, OpenGrey, RCAAP and in the article reference lists. This review included 29 articles. The majority of programmes/interventions addressed one or more of the four components of MHL, with the knowledge of mental disorders and stigma reduction components being the most covered; were taught by adolescent’s regular teachers; used face to face interventions; had a height variable duration; used non-validated instruments; were implemented in a classroom environment; and showed statistically significant improvements in adolescent’s MHL levels. More research is needed to implement/construct programmes/interventions promoting adolescents’ MHL concerning knowledge on how to obtain and maintain good mental health.

Highlights

Published: 9 September 2021The world is currently facing a very challenging public health problem: the significant prevalence of mental health problems in the general population and adolescents and young people [1,2], as well as their low/moderate levels of mental health literacy [3,4,5].Mental health problems account for 12% of illnesses worldwide, and in developed countries, the figure rises to 23% [6]
This review provides a comprehensive synthesis of the available evidence on the programmes/interventions promoting mental health literacy (MHL) in adolescents in school settings
The results of this review show that most programmes/interventions address one or more of the four components of MHL defined by Kutcher, Wei and Coniglio [16]; that is, mental health disorders and problems, signs/symptoms and treatments, myths related to mental illness, non-stigmatising attitudes/behaviours and options/sources for help seeking

Summary

Introduction

Published: 9 September 2021The world is currently facing a very challenging public health problem: the significant prevalence of mental health problems in the general population and adolescents and young people [1,2], as well as their low/moderate levels of mental health literacy [3,4,5].Mental health problems account for 12% of illnesses worldwide, and in developed countries, the figure rises to 23% [6]. As far as children and adolescents are concerned, around 10–20% are affected by these types of problems worldwide [7,8], with most of these problems onsetting during early adulthood and adolescence [9]. The literature so far shows us that the levels of mental health literacy (MHL) of the general population and adolescents have been progressively increasing but are still at low/moderate levels [3,4,5]. This contributes to the absence of help seeking by adolescents, affects their development and increases the risk of psychiatric disorders recurring [11,12,13]

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Conclusion