Improving mental health literacy for children and adolescents

In this plenary lecture we have tried to answered on following questions: What is Mental Health Literacy? What children and their supporters know about mental disorders ? What adolescents and their supporters know about mental disorders ? What has been done to improve the knowledge and beliefs of children and adolescents and their supporters? We searched PubMed and PsycINFO for all studies using the phrase “mental health literacy”. The studies identified were supplemented by all studies in a review by Jorm and Kelly (2007) and were updated with new studies found by searching the reference lists of all located studies. Only studies relevant to child and adolescents were included. Good mental health literacy in children and adolescents and their key helpers may lead to better outcomes for those with mental disorders, either by facilitating early help-seeking by young people themselves, or by helping adults to identify early signs of mental disorders and seek help on their behalf. Few interventions to improve mental health literacy of children and adolescents and their helpers have been evaluated, and even fewer have been well evaluated. There are four categories of interventions to improve mental health literacy: whole-of-community campaigns; community campaigns aimed at a children and adolescents audience; school-based interventions teaching help-seeking skills, mental health literacy, or resilience; and programs training individuals to better intervene in a mental health crisis. The effectiveness of future interventions could be enhanced by using specific health promotion models to guide their development. The results indicated that mental health literacy was a potential factor that could have an impact on the mental health status of adolescents. Enhancing the mental health literacy level should be considered as an important preventive measure of mental health problems for children and adolescents