Mental Health Training for Elementary Teachers Through Tele-education and Its Impact on the School Atmosphere

Mental Disorders

effectiveness, distance learning, mental health

The purpose of this study is to create a web-based interactive educational environment to train elementary teachers, to identify children and adolescents in need of specialized mental health care and give them some advises in managing problematic children in class. After the creation of such an educational environment the psychoeducational project was tested in order to verify it's effectiveness.

Objectives: To develop and test the efficacy of a computer-based training to elementary school teachers of the most common mental health problems. Outcomes: (a)early identification of the most common mental health problems among children and adolescents, (b)teacher's acquirement of manage skills to better deal with behavior problems and (c)teacher's acquisition of important knowledge to refer students to treatment when necessary. Method: This research includes two steps: a pilot project (already implemented, whose data will be presented here) and a randomized clinical trial intervention (that will be implemented in a few months). 1. Pilot project, without control group - Comprehended six sessions of educational videos covering basic concepts of mental health stigma and the main disorders that affects children and adolescents followed by discussion forums, quizzes and a conclusion web conferencing with a specialist. 2. A randomized controlled trial with a sample of 176 teachers from nine elementary schools were randomly divided in three groups: a web-based interactive educational group (WBIE), a text and video-based educational group (TWBE) and a waiting list group (WL). Outcome measures: knowledge, beliefs and attitudes of teachers in mental health and satisfaction with the training received. Results: The results show that there was an increase in knowledge, attitude changes in mental health and reducing stigma among teachers of web-based interactive educational group. Indeed, comparing the three groups of study participants (WBIE, TVBE and WL), was verified that TVBE group compared with WL group did not show a significant statistical difference (B = 0.957, p = 0.127). Comparing WBIE with WL group, the WBIE answers correctly 1:44 (B = 1.44, p = 0.015). Regarding beliefs and attitudes, WBIE group increased significantly in the ability to identify children with mental health problems, search for mental health information, the ability to recognize colleagues with mental health problems. The average confidence in helping a student with mental health problems also showed increased after psychoeducational intervention in WBIE group. Discussion: After adjusting educational tools, the methodology and with a bigger sample it's expected to have greater positive results. It's very important to offer teachers a basic apparatus so that they will be able to deal with mental health issues in schools.

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