Educational interventions to promote adolescents’ mental health: A scoping review

Abstract

Background: Adolescents often experience discomfort due to individual experiences and the influence of their environment. This discomfort sometimes leads to mental health problems. Education is pivotal in promoting adolescents’ mental health through dedicated prevention interventions and through everyday educational practice, both at school and in the community. Objective: To develop an overview of the types of educational interventions aimed at promoting the mental health of adolescents and young adults, providing helpful guidance and insights to teachers/educators. Methods: We conducted a scoping review developed through searches in the CINAHL, Eric, PsycINFO and PubMed databases. We summarised data using descriptive analysis, grouping educational interventions category according to their goals and purposes. Results: Of the initial 704 articles identified, 19 met the study inclusion criteria. Consistent with Dewey’s educational theory, most of the interventions reported in the selected studies can be viewed as genuine ‘educational’ interventions, in that they involved experiential and interactive activities such as discussion groups, role-play and art-based activities. Fewer interventions involved less participatory and more ‘information-based’ activities, such as lessons. However, in many interventions, the role of teachers/educators in promoting young people’s mental health was underestimated; indeed, in only a few cases were they the providers/co-providers of the activities described, and rarely was there continuity/alignment between the interventions and everyday school activities. Conclusions: Conducting a greater number of formal/informal educational interventions to promote adolescents’ mental health is imperative, especially in the current socio-historical context, but this enterprise must acknowledge, value and support the important role of teachers/educators as leaders and participants in this endeavour.

Building connections in health and wellbeing education: Qualitative findings of a study with New Zealand agricultural students

“…There is an increasing emphasis on the delivery of key mental health messages within education systems (Atkins et al, 2010; Young et al, 2022). Schools and universities have a fundamental role in improving mental health awareness and knowledge (Daniele et al, 2022; Huang et al, 2018; Jorm, 2015; O’Reilly et al, 2018; Reavley et al, 2012). Guest speakers, workshops and special classes on mental health are becoming more frequent in these settings with varying degrees of success (Huang et al, 2018; O’Reilly et al, 2018).…”

Health in everyday teaching practice in Sweden: a social pedagogical analysis of high school teachers’ descriptions

“…Much of the research on teachers' involvement in student health has examined various programmes and initiatives implemented at particular schools. Although some research has concerned teacher involvement in programmes targeting physical activity (Barcelona et al, 2022) and nutrition (Bergling et al, 2022), most research has concerned programmes targeting mental health (Askell-Williams and Cefai, 2014;Daniele et al, 2022;Graham et al, 2011). Overall, it is mental health promotion that appears to be the focus of most of the research on the role of the teacher in student health work.…”

Evaluation of the Effect of Mental Health Education on Improving Adolescents’ Social Adaptability

“…In this stage, teenagers need to learn and master some social skills. However, the development speed of modern society is particularly fast, such as high-tech industry technology; its update speed even exceeds the speed of ordinary people to learn and master it, like the promotion of 4G technology was only more than ten years; then, 5G technology emerged, and even 6G technology has been put into research [2,3]. In other fields such as games, movies, food, and clothing, whether in form or content, its metabolism and update speed can be measured in days.…”