A Program Design For Cultivating Mental Health Literacy In Adolescents:Based On The Survey Among Primary And Secondary School Students In Chongqing

Mental health literacy refers to knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid their recognition,management,or prevention.Today,there are still many adolescents who have low levels of mental health literacy,suffer from stigma around mental illness,and lack the specific knowledge and skills needed to provide social support and seek appropriate help promptly.Training primary and middle school students’ mental health literacy can effectively increase their understanding of mental health and mental illness-related knowledge,reduce the stigma of mental illness,increase the willingness to seek help and reduce psychological distress,further improve the professional psychological help behavior of primary and middle school students,reduce the incidence of major psychological crisis events.To provide theoretical support and a practical basis for the cultivation of mental health literacy among primary and secondary school students,the adolescent mental health literacy scale compiled by Portuguese Professor Campos and his team was revised in line with the physical and mental development characteristics of primary and secondary school students.And the status quo of mental health literacy for primary and secondary school students was investigated in Chongqing.Based on the conceptual structure of mental health literacy and the survey results of the status quo of mental health literacy of primary and secondary school students in Chongqing,this paper designed the mental health literacy training program for junior high school students and evaluated the rationality of the structure and content of the training program by using Delphi consensus method,to provide a reference for schoolteachers to carry out mental health literacy training.The results show:(1)The revised scale of primary and secondary school students’ mental health literacy includes four dimensions: seeking help,self-help strategy,stigma attitude,and knowledge of the specific mental illness.The revised scale has good reliability and validity and can be used as a reliable measurement tool to evaluate the level of primary and secondary school students’ mental health literacy.(2)Overall,the mental health literacy of primary and middle school students in Chongqing is good,but in the dimension of seeking help,the trend of declining with age is as follows: primary school students > junior middle school students,junior middle school students > senior high school students.Students who knew patients with mental illness scored lower in mental health literacy than students who did not,especially in seeking help dimensions.There was no significant difference in the total score of mental health literacy by gender.However,female students scored higher than male students in the dimensions of stigma and knowledge of the specific mental illness.The mental health literacy level of primary and secondary school students is correlated positively with the place of residence,the education level of their parents,and the monthly family income.(3)The mental health literacy training program for junior high school students evaluated by several experts is reasonable in structure,comprehensive in content,professional in related mental health knowledge,close to the reality of students’ lives,in line with students’ development rules and needs,which can provide a reference for schoolteachers to carry out mental health literacy training for junior high school students.