The Building Educators' skills in Adolescent Mental health (BEAM) program: Evaluating a mental health training program for secondary school Year Advisors

Not Applicable

Completed

• Conditions: Depression; Mental Health - Anxiety; Anxiety; Mental Health - Depression; Public Health - Health promotion/education

• Registration Number: ACTRN12619000821190
• Lead Sponsor: Black Dog Institute

Brief Summary

Secondary schools are increasingly supporting adolescents’ mental health and well-being, yet many teachers report that they lack the skills and confidence to do so. Building Educators’ skills in Adolescent Mental Health (BEAM) is a web-based training program developed to improve secondary school teachers’ knowledge and confidence in caring for students’ mental health. This pilot study examined the preliminary effectiveness and acceptability of the BEAM program for improving mental health knowledge, attitudes, confidence, helping behaviors, and psychological distress among 70 secondary school Year Advisors from NSW, Australia. Year Advisors had access to the BEAM program for 6 weeks. Self-report surveys, delivered at baseline, immediately after the training (6-weeks post baseline) and 3-months later were used to measure changes in training outcomes. At completion of the training, participants reported higher levels of confidence and helping behaviours. Psychological distress was also lower. Findings indicated that the BEAM program may be beneficial for improving Year Advisors abilities to care for students’ mental health; however, some program modifications are required to increase completions.

Detailed Description

Not available

Study Timeline

• Results First Posted: 1900-01-01
• Study Start: 2019-06-06
• Study Completion: 2019-12-16
• Last Update Posted: 14 March 2022

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: Completed
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 71

Inclusion Criteria

Participants in this study will be secondary school teachers who:

1) Are currently employed full-time in the role of Year Advisor (or equivalent) for students at any secondary school in NSW. In recognition that the title of Year Advisor is not uniformly used across schools, the title can be interchangeable with other terms such as Student Co-ordinator or Head of Year. Participants must be teachers in school leadership positions who are responsible for overseeing a cohort of students, anywhere between Grade 7 and 12.
2) Are available and employed at their school for the duration of the study (approximately 8 weeks).
3) Are able to obtain the signed consent of their school principal.
4) Are from a school with at least one other Year Advisor participating.

Exclusion Criteria

Not provided

Study & Design

• Study Type: Interventional
• Study Design: Not specified

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Mental heath knowledge: This will be measured by a change in total scores on an adapted version of the Mental Health Knowledge Scale (MAKS; Evans-Lacko et al., 2010), and Recognition of Mental Illness vignettes (Jorm & Wright, 2008).[Timepoint 1: Baseline pre-training (day 1) <br>Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43) <br>Timepoint 3: 3 month follow-up (day 141) ];Attitudes: This will be measured by a change in total scores on an adapted version of the Stigmatising Attitudes Scale (Griffiths, K. M., Christensen, H., Jorm, A. F., Evans, K., & Groves, C. , 2004). <br><br>[Timepoint 1: Baseline pre-training (day 1) <br>Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43) <br>Timepoint 3: 3 month follow-up (day 141) ];Confidence: This will be measured by a change in total scores on an adapted version of the Confidence questionnaire (Sebbens, Hassmen, Crisp, and Wensley, 2016).[Timepoint 1: Baseline pre-training (day 1) <br>Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43) <br>Timepoint 3: 3 month follow-up (day 141) ]