Search results

Mental health problems make a significant contribution to morbidity and mortality in adolescents worldwide. To address mental health in adolescents policy response should intertwine the life course approach and the ecological model that positions adolescents in the context of multifactorial influences. The purpose of this paper is to describe policy response at four levels: multisector policies and interventions, health systems policies and interventions, evidence-based clinical interventions and actions to monitor progress. It aims to analyse the implications for adolescent mental health of key recent global commitments including the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health.

Multisector policies and interventions on determinants of adolescent mental health and well-being are drawn from the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health. Key health systems actions are derived from the Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan (2013-2020). In both cases, policies and interventions are made specific for provisions relevant to adolescents. Examples of implementation of policies and interventions are drawn from a World Health Organization (WHO) review of national policy documents found in WHO MiNDbank. A list of indicators to monitor progress is being proposed based on Mental Health Atlas and WHO indicators for adolescent health.

With some notable exceptions, the mental health of adolescents is not adequately addressed by national health policies. There is a considerable body of evidence on the effectiveness of policies and interventions, and recent global commitments give new hope for promoting adolescent mental health through a multisectoral response, within which the health sector has an important role to play. Global reporting mechanisms, including the Mental Health Atlas, should be “adolescent-sensitive”, meaning that adolescent specific impact, outcomes, inputs and determinants should be measured, reported and acted upon.

This paper analyses the meaning specific to adolescents in the policies and interventions promoted in the SDGs, the Global Strategy for Women’s, Children’s and Adolescents’ Health and the Comprehensive Mental Health Action Plan (2013-2020). For the first time a four-levels policy response specific to adolescent mental health is put together: multisector policies and interventions, health systems policies and interventions, evidence-based clinical interventions and actions to monitor progress.

Previous research has suggested high levels of unaddressed mental health needs among male-dominated work settings. The mining industry has been a recent focus internationally. This paper aims to critically examine research regarding organizational mental health interventions for people working in mining industries.

The narrative review used a systematic standardized search strategy in six databases and grey literature from 1990 to 2019.

Of the 418 studies identified, seven studies (five quantitative and two qualitative studies) met the inclusion criteria. Analysis of these studies revealed the organisational interventions available to address mental health needs of miners. Interventions were categorised into organisational and individual-focused approaches. Evidence shows there is great potential in conducting workplace mental health programs, yet further research is required to create a strong evidence base for substantiated policy and practice implications.

Mental health interventions and programs should be available in mining industry to enhance mental health. Organisations can also improve mental health by implementing significant changes in the work environment and identifying workplace factors that induce strain and contribute to psychological distress in employees. Attempt can be made at restructuring safety policies and practices to include mental health, addressing organisational structures such as work schedules and providing training for managers and supervisors.

This review focuses on the unique characteristics pertaining to male-dominated mining industries and workplace mental health interventions which are aimed at supporting employee mental health.

There is a growing policy imperative to promote positive mental health as well as prevent the development of mental health problems in children. This paper summarises the findings of published systematic reviews evaluating such interventions. A search was undertaken of ten electronic databases using a combination of medical subject headings (MeSH) and free text searches. Systematic reviews covering mental health promotion or mental illness prevention interventions aimed at infants, children or young people up to age 19 were included. Reviews of drug and alcohol prevention programmes and programmes to prevent childhood abuse and neglect were excluded because these have been the subject of recent good quality reviews of reviews. A total of 27 systematic reviews were included. These targeted a range of risk and protective factors, and a range of populations (including parents and children). While many lacked methodological rigour, overall the evidence is strongly suggestive of the effectiveness of a range of interventions in promoting positive mental well‐being, and reducing key risk factors for mental illness in children. Based on this evidence, arguments are advanced for the preferential provision of early preventive programmes.

Within the framework of Health Promoting Schools Up is an intervention using a whole school approach aimed at promoting mental health by strengthening social and emotional competence among schoolchildren. Social and emotional competence is an integral part of many school-based mental health interventions but only a minority of interventions measure changes in competences. The purpose of this paper is to present the intervention Up and document changes in social and emotional competence among schoolchildren before and after the intervention.

–Up consists of four components: education and activities for schoolchildren; development of staff skills; involvement of parents; and initiatives in everyday life at school. Up was implemented in two Danish schools in 2010-2011. Social and emotional competence was measured among 11-15-year old schoolchildren before (response rate 96.2 per cent, n=589) and after (response rate 83.9 per cent, n=532) the intervention.

Changes in level of social competence were assessed by the prevalence of a high level of social and emotional competence before (33.3 per cent) and after (40.8 per cent) the intervention (p-value=0.01).

–Up provides valuable experiences for adapting evidence-based mental health promotion to the Danish school system which is characterized by democracy, autonomy and inclusion. Future research should study the implementation and effect of Up in larger scale studies.

The comprehensive description of Up serves as important information for policymakers and practitioners working with mental health promotion.

The whole school approach intervention Up has the potential to promote social and emotional competence and reduce socioeconomic differences in social and emotional competence among schoolchildren.

Reviews previous studies of the universal approach to mental health promotion, and disease prevention programmes or interventions in schools. Over 8,000 publications were identified initially and 425 studies obtained for further review. The inclusion criteria were met by 17 (mostly US) studies investigating 16 interventions. Positive evidence of effectiveness was obtained for programmes that adopted a whole‐school approach, were implemented continuously for more than a year, and were aimed at the promotion of mental health as opposed to the prevention of mental illness. Provides evidence that universal school mental health promotion programmes can be effective and suggests that long‐term interventions promoting the positive mental health of all pupils and involving changes to the school climate are likely to be more successful than brief class‐based mental illness prevention programmes.

The physical health needs of people with mental health problems are currently under addressed and often ignored, both in training and in practice. The PRIMROSE trial intervention was designed to remedy that – focusing in particular on risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD). This paper describes how people with experience of using mental health services and carers contributed to the development of the PRIMROSE intervention. It draws out key messages for educators, researchers and practitioners.

Using a case study approach the paper outlines how a Third sector organisation supported the study team in setting up a Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP), drawing on a pre-existing model and recent thinking about service user and carer involvement in research. It is described how the approach sought to engage wider involvement of people with an interest in CVD while also offering more focused input into specifically the development of the trial intervention.

An innovative approach was taken whereby a large LEAP, comprising 27 service users and carers, was supporting the development of the study mainly through e-mail and web updates and feedback, while a sub-group of the LEAP, with eight members, met three times and had a focus on inputting ideas into the development of the intervention. The creation of a LEAP proved helpful to the project, resulting in an enhanced and more relevant intervention – summed up in a series of eleven recommendations. Appointment of an independent chair of the sub-group proved invaluable and there is learning from this project for other similar initiatives.

This study has value for others who are developing practice interventions. A range of suggestions were made which will have relevance for training, ensuring that physical health issues are not ignored. There is much to learn too from the process of this project, for the involvement of service users and carers in research, education and in practice development.

The purpose of this study was to assess whether a multifaceted intervention could improve mental health literacy, facilitate help seeking and reduce psychological distress and alcohol misuse in staff of a multi-campus university in Australia.

In this cluster randomised trial (ACTRN12610001027000), nine campuses were paired, with one of each pair randomly assigned to either intervention or control. Interventions (which were whole-of-campus) included e-mails, posters, campus events, factsheets/booklets and mental health first aid training courses. A monitoring sample of staff were recruited from each campus. Participants had a 20-minute computer-assisted telephone interview at baseline, and at the end of academic years 1 and 2. The interview assessed mental health literacy, help seeking for mental health problems, psychological distress and alcohol use. The primary outcomes were depression and anxiety levels and alcohol use and pertained to the individual level. Six campuses were randomised to intervention and three to control and all campuses were included in the analysis.

There were no effects on depression and anxiety levels and alcohol use. Recall of intervention elements was greater in the intervention group at the end of the two-year assessment period. Staff in the intervention group showed better recognition of depression, greater knowledge of the National Health and Medical Research Council guidelines for safe levels of drinking and a greater intention to seek help for alcohol misuse from a general practitioner.

Future interventions should involve more focused interventions that include consideration of working conditions and their influence on mental health, as well as addressing mental illness among employees, regardless of cause.

Football exercise as an intervention for people with severe mental health problems has seen an increasing interest in the past years. To date, there is, however, no comprehensive review of the empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of these interventions. In this review, the authors have comprised the research findings from the peer-review literature as well as the theoretical approaches to football exercise as an adjunct treatment. This overview will be informative to everybody who is planning to develop a football intervention for this population as well as to the people who are preparing evaluation studies that measure the effectiveness of such interventions. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors identified research papers in the peer-review literature that feature empirical findings on “football interventions” that aim at improving mental and/or physical well-being in participants with mental health problems. The authors are using the term “football intervention” here in the sense that the participants actively took part in football exercise, so the authors excluded studies in which the participants only watched football or used football as a metaphor to discuss mental health problems. In a table, the authors indicate the definition of the target group, targeted outcomes, measured outcomes, form and frequency of the intervention as well as the research method(s).

The authors identified 16 studies on 15 projects. The majority of studies were qualitative and had positive findings in which the participants reported increased well-being and connectedness, elevation of symptoms and improved physical well-being. The outcomes of the quantitative studies, however, were mixed with some results suggesting that not all intended goals were achieved. There seems to be a need for more quantitative studies to triangulate the qualitative findings. Interestingly, most interventions take place in the UK. Many studies fail to give detailed methodological information and often the aims of the interventions are vague or not stated at all.

Due to the heterogeneity of the studies and relative scarcity of evaluation projects on football interventions for people with mental health problems, the authors could not conduct an in-depth systematic review. Furthermore, the information on methods was often unsatisfying and despite efforts to get more detailed input from the authors of cited papers, those gaps could not always be filled. Instead of coming up with a crystal-clear summary of whether and how football interventions work for everybody, topics were identified that need to be addressed in the planning of interventions, in evaluation studies, in implementation efforts and in the theoretical discourse.

This paper constitutes a helpful overview for everybody who is interested in the theoretical background of football interventions for people with mental health problems, for people who are planning to develop respective interventions, for researchers who engage in evaluation projects that look into the effectiveness of football interventions (or similar exercise interventions) as well as for the people who are interested in how football interventions can be implemented. This paper is likely to make a contribution to the advancement of alternative exercise interventions that aim at improving mental, physical and social health in people with mental health problems.

This paper will help putting the topic of football interventions (and similar, alternative exercise interventions) further up on the public health agenda by providing an overview of the empirical evidence at hand and by specifying advantages of the approach as well as pointing out actions that need to be taken to make football a recognised, evidence based and viable option for adjunct mental health treatment that is attractive to potential participants as well as funders as well as to the potential participants.

There is no comprehensive summary to date that provides a (reasonably) systematic overview of empirical findings for football interventions for people with MH problems. Furthermore, the literature on the theoretical background of these interventions has been somewhat patchy and heterogonous. This paper aims at filling both these gaps and identifies the issues that need to be covered in the planning of respective interventions and evaluations. This paper will be useful to everybody who is developing football interventions (or similar alternative adjunct exercise interventions), who is conducting evaluation research in this area and who is interested in the implementation of football interventions.

Those most socially disadvantaged are at a greater risk of common mental disorder (CMD). The need to evaluate the health impact of social policy interventions that aim to reduce social inequalities between the disadvantaged and the better off is well recognised. This paper reports findings from a review to explore evidence on the health impact of UK policy interventions that aim to tackle the key social determinants of CMD. These were previously identified from the literature as cumulative socioeconomic deprivation, unemployment, psychosocial work characteristics, and poor social relationships. We identified some evidence of a positive impact on CMD of urban regeneration schemes, but evidence was sparse on interventions relating to the other determinants. The ability of research to inform policy designed to improve the lives of the disadvantaged could be assisted by a broader definition of what counts as evidence. This may include wider use of qualitative methodologies and a more deliberate focus on social processes known to be implicated in mental health.

There is growing evidence that health behaviour change interventions are associated with mental health and wellbeing improvements. This paper aims to examine the effect of healthy lifestyle interventions on mental wellbeing.

Six databases (Medline, Evidence Based Medicine Cochrane Registered Controlled Trials, Evidence Based Medicine Full Text Reviews, British Nursing Index, Embase, PsycINFO) were searched from database commencement up to April 2013. A broad focus on lifestyle interventions and mental health and wellbeing outcomes was chosen. Papers were systematically extracted by title then abstract according to predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Inclusion criteria: any individual population (non-couple/family); any health behaviour change interventions; mental health and wellbeing outcomes; and a one-two level of evidence. Interventions aimed at workers were excluded, as were articles assessing cognitive functioning rather than mental health or wellbeing, or those using medications in interventions.

Two authors reviewed 95 full papers. In total, 29 papers met inclusion criteria, representing a range of interventions spanning physical activity, diet, alcohol intake, drug use and smoking. A range of measures were used. The majority (n=25) of studies demonstrated improvements on at least one indicator of mental health and wellbeing. Limitations include the broad range of outcome measures used, varied follow-up times and the lack of detail in reporting interventions.

Health behaviour change interventions targeting physical outcomes appear to have benefits to mental health and wellbeing spanning healthy populations and those with physical or mental health problems. Evidence is strongest for interventions targeting exercise and diet, particularly in combination and the actual lifestyle changes made and adherence appear to be important. However, it is not clear from this review which specific components are necessary or essential for improvements in mental health and wellbeing.