Effective school-based mental health promotion and prevention interventions in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs) can positively impact the mental health and well-being of large numbers of young people. This scoping review aimed to investigate the implementation of effective mental health promotion and prevention interventions in LMIC schools. A scoping review of the international literature was conducted and followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis extension for Scoping Reviews guidelines. Medline, PsycInfo, Scopus, Embase, CINAHL and Cochrane were searched for peer-reviewed literature published from 2014 to 2022. PsycExtra, Google Scholar and the websites of key organisations were searched for relevant grey literature. Study selection focussed on mental health promotion interventions, including the development of social and emotional skills and mental health literacy, and prevention interventions, including anti-bullying and skill-based interventions for “at-risk” students. Twenty-seven studies evaluating 25 school-based interventions in 17 LMICs were included in the review. Fifteen interventions were developed in the implementing country and 10 were adapted from high-income countries (HICs) or other settings. Findings from the studies reviewed were generally positive, especially when interventions were implemented to a high quality. Universal life-skills interventions were found to increase social and emotional skills, decrease problem behaviours and positively impact students’ mental health and well-being. Mental health literacy interventions increased mental health knowledge and decreased stigma among students and school staff. Outcomes for externally facilitated anti-bullying interventions were less positive. All 19 effective studies reported on some aspects of programme implementation, and 15 monitored implementation fidelity. Eleven studies outlined the programme’s underpinning theoretical model. Only four studies reported on the cultural adaptation of programmes in detail. Including young people in the adaptation process was reported to facilitate natural cultural adaptation of programmes, while input from programme developers was considered key to ensuring that the core components of interventions were retained. The review findings indicate increasing evidence of effective mental health interventions in LMIC schools. To facilitate the sustainability, replication and scaling-up of these interventions, greater attention is needed to reporting on intervention core components, and the processes of implementation and cultural adaptation in the local setting.

Crises such as the corona pandemic, but also climate change associated events such as extreme weather events are major stressors for people on an individual, but also on a population level. Such crises often lead to highly burdened individuals with reduced quality of life, decreased well-being, mental health problems and an accumulation of psychiatric illnesses, especially in vulnerable population groups. These create a high demand and need for low intensive (psychosocial) support and primary and clinical care that can often no longer be adequately met by the existing infrastructure. However, good mental health and mental health care is a necessary prerequisite for people to lead fulfilling and productive lives and for communities and their settings (such as families, schools and workplaces, etc.) to function well. Therefore efficient supporting (public mental health) approaches are urgently needed. This presentation will introduce and discuss public mental health approaches and their effectiveness with a focus on mental health promotion and prevention. The implementation and dissemination of these approaches may help to further strengthen psychological resilience in communities to be better prepared for coping with acute crises and long-term stressors.

There is growing evidence of an escalation of depression in young people. In light of this, schools are increasingly being confronted with the challenge of how to best manage students with depressive disorders. Such management includes consideration of the academic, behavioural, social and emotional implications of the disorder. This article provides school practitioners and management with a review of what constitutes ‘best practice’ in school management of students with depressive disorders. It adopts the mental health intervention framework of the Institute of Medicine, considering how school-based intervention occurs across the four domains of mental health promotion, prevention, case identification and treatment, as well as maintenance of students with or at-risk of depression. It provides a checklist for practitioners at each stage of the Institute of Medicine intervention spectrum. Moreover, it takes the view that best practice in psychology is always evidence-based practice, although discerning a clear path through the available research is not always obvious.

Public mental health incorporates a number of strategies from mental well-being promotion to primary prevention and other forms of prevention. There is considerable evidence in the literature to suggest that early interventions and public education can work well for reducing psychiatric morbidity and resulting burden of disease. Educational strategies need to focus on individual, societal and environmental aspects. Targeted interventions at individuals will also need to focus on the whole population. A nested approach with the individual at the heart of it surrounded by family surrounded by society at large is the most suitable way to approach this. This Guidance should be read along with the European Psychiatric Association (EPA) Guidance on Prevention. Those at risk of developing psychiatric disorders also require adequate interventions as well as those who may have already developed illness. However, on the model of triage, mental health and well-being promotion need to be prioritized to ensure that, with the limited resources available, these activities do not get forgotten. One possibility is to have separate programmes for addressing concerns of a particular population group, another that is relevant for the broader general population. Mental health promotion as a concept is important and this will allow prevention of some psychiatric disorders and, by improving coping strategies, is likely to reduce the burden and stress induced by mental illness.

School vision and mission statements are an explicit indication of a school's priorities. Research has found academic motivation, mental health promotion, and school belonging to be the most frequently cited themes in these statements. The present study sought to examine whether these themes relate to student academic achievement, as indicated by National Assessment Program — Literacy and Numeracy (NAPLAN) scores. A stratified sample of 287 secondary schools in Victoria, Australia was analysed using two language analytic approaches: qualitative emergent coding and supervised lexical analysis. The highest academic scores occurred when mental health promotion was included, though results depended to some extent on the analytic approach and the level of aggregation. Results do suggest that explicitly prioritising both academic performance and mental health is beneficial. Further, the study provides an approach for using language analysis to investigate multilevel constructs in schools.

Achieving broad-scale parent1 engagement with school initiatives has proven elusive. This article reports survey data from 287 Maltese parents about their perceptions of the quality of their child's school's initiatives for promoting students’ wellbeing and mental health. Findings indicate that, on average, parents rated school initiatives highly. However, a MANCOVA of respondents grouped into three categories of Self-Assessed Parenting Capabilities (low, medium, high) showed that parents who held low perceptions of their own parenting capabilities also held significantly lower perceptions of the quality of schools’ mental health promotion initiatives. Less favourable dispositions towards school mental health promotion initiatives by parents with relatively low-parenting capabilities have implications for the design and delivery of school-based initiatives. For example, typical parent engagement, support and information provision activities (e.g., parent-teacher meetings, newsletters) might be less well received in families that arguably have a greater need to engage with such initiatives. This study has implications for whole-school mental health promotion initiatives that seek to include all parents.

The first World Health Organization's global action plan for mental health recognizes the importance of mental health promotion and prevention of mental disorders, through the inclusion of one of four objectives focused on this crucial area of research and practice. This paper aims to provide an ‘aerial view’ of the field of mental health promotion and prevention of mental disorders with a focus on low- and middle-income countries. Starting with reasons why promotion and prevention need to take center stage in global mental health efforts, the paper provides a framework and four general principles to guide such efforts: a socio-ecological perspective (place); an inter-sectoral and interdisciplinary approach (collaboration), a developmental perspective (timing), and a participatory and empowerment approach (strengths), or PaCTS. Evidence-based examples of mental health promotion, universal, selective, and indicated prevention are described.

Educators are at the heart of educational reforms, such as the introduction of mental health promotion initiatives into early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings. Good quality implementation of reforms requires educators to engage in high quality professional learning: If educators have not had opportunities to gain appropriate knowledge and expertise, new initiatives may be poorly implemented and may consequently achieve limited outcomes. This article reports ECEC educators’ perspectives about the impact on their knowledge and practices of the professional education component of the KidsMatter mental health promotion initiative. Educators from 111 ECEC services across Australia contributed a range of types of data, including questionnaires about their knowledge and self-efficacy, feedback about each professional education session, and photo stories about their changed professional practices. Participants indicated that their professional learning led to changed practices in areas such as interpreting children's behaviours, interacting with children, approaching parents, and collaborating with colleagues. Participants’ photo stories illustrate how professional education that focuses on content, active learning, coherence, and collaboration can positively influence knowledge and practices. However, if such gains are to last beyond relatively highly resourced start-up phases of initiatives, professional education needs to integrate with, and draw from, the ongoing availability of other professionals such as guidance and counselling staff, who have complementary knowledge and expertise; be recognised and embedded as a core component of ECEC educators’ roles and their workplace practices; and be culturally and contextually situated. Staff accounts of the impact of their professional learning on their practices can highlight to policy-makers the practical outcomes of strong investments in professional education. Awareness by other professions of the affordances and constraints faced by ECEC educators may contribute to interdisciplinary synergies among the range of professions involved in mental health promotion in educational settings.