Promoting Mental Health in Young Children - a Dialogue Based Approach in Kindergartens: A Randomized Controlled Trial

The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if the novel Dialogue Based Early Detection (DBED) method can prevent impaired mental health in kindergarten children. It will also learn about the screening properties of DBED to identify children with impaired mental health, if DBED facilitates early interventions, and if DBED is well accepted and sustainable in an ordinary kindergarten setting.

The main questions it aims to answer are:

• Do children in kindergartens where DBED is implemented develop better mental health scores than children in kindergarten where DBED is not implemented?
• How well identifies DBED kindergarten children with impaired mental health compared to a traditional screening instrument (the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire)?
• What is the impact of DBED on activation of interventions for mental health problems?
• What is the social validity of DBED?

Researchers will compare outcomes in kindergartens where DBED is implemented with outcomes in kindergartens where it's not.

• During the last three years of kindergarten attendance participants (parents of kindergarten children) in the intervention kindergartens will take part in the biannual DBED parent-teacher meetings, while participants in the control kindergartens will take part in traditional parent-teacher meetings.
• Twice a year all participants will answer questionnaires of the child's mental health and parental stress during the follow-up period (3 years in kindergarten and 2 first years in school).
• Participants in the intervention kindergartens will answer user satisfaction questionnaires after every parent-teacher meeting.
• The kindergarten teachers will report on type and time of supportive interventions for each participating child during the follow-up period in kindergarten.