EDUCATIONAL SESSION TO PROMOTE MENTAL HEALTH AND FIGHT STIGMA IN THE TEENAGE YEARS

Negative attitudes towards mental illness are visible already in the teenage years. Due to the stigma which still burdens mental illness, asking for help is conditioned by the fear of being rejected by the group of peers. Acting in that moment is crucial for the development of attitudes. The most effective programmes addressed to teenagers are those educative and more concretely,
those which work beyond the passive transmission of information.

An educational session of Lo hablamos ("Let´s talk about it") project for secondary students, 14-16 years old, has been developed in Andalusia, in order to promote mental health and to fight stigma, improving knowledge and changing attitudes about mental illness among adolescents. The activities of the educational session promote the debate, the self reflection, later group reflection and role playing. To prove its effectiveness, a pilot session was carried out. It was highly assessed by participants. They also pointed out the convenience of including some changes in the program and developing a teachers training session. A teacher guidebook and a teachers training session have been already set up.

Aim. To design the curriculum pack of "Lo hablamos" project.

Method: Review of evaluations of programmes with similar objectives in different Western countries. 2 out of the 6 Lo hablamos activities have been adapted from the educational programme Positive Mental Attitudes, including an audiovisual activity highly assessed by participants in the pilot session. The session lasted 3 hours, had two moderators and was piloted with a group of 25 teenagers who attended class in an Andalusian High School. The sources of information to run the evaluation were: video recording of the session; post-test questionnaires for the participants (perceived learning, satisfaction, fun, preferred activities, most relevant issues learnt), structured interviews with moderators (perceived motivation of the group, suitable activities to reach the objectives, session pace, adjustment of schedule, satisfaction perceived) and data from external observation.

Results: The results extracted from participants questionnaires data mining show that the session modifies their perception about mental health in general, that it helps improving their knowledge about mental illness and helps understanding mental health from a wider conception. It also shows that participants understand that mental illness may affect anyone and removes wrong ideas about mental illness as, before the session started, they assumed as true information based on clichés without realising it could be wrong. The results of the information given by teachers showed the need to include small changes in the planning and an activity of presentation and to increase the information for developing the activities addressed to the moderators. As a result of the pilot session, the training session of the future moderators is designed. It will include contents about stigma, adolescence and stigma and also the teachers training to develop the session of the project Lo hablamos.

Discussion. The educational session of Lo hablamos project has demonstrated its effectiveness in a pilot testing. To have a full assessment of the project it will be required to obtain information about its implementation in High Schools, as well as data from assessement by a larger number of participants and moderators.