Daniel Eisenberg, PhD, a UCLA Depression Grand Challenge-affiliated faculty member, co-authored a chapter in “The Handbook of Mental Health Communication,” an academic publication investigating mass communication approaches to mental health. The chapter offers an updated review of school-based interventions that address mental health knowledge and attitudes, including negative mental health stigma. The team analyzed 111 evaluation studies involving 84 interventions and found that most programs improve students’ knowledge and attitudes in the short term, though long-term effects are more variable or insufficiently measured.
The chapter also introduces the authors’ ongoing development of an evidence repository, also known as a registry or clearinghouse, specifically focused on school-based interventions. The goal of the repository is to help school administrators identify programs that are both effective and feasible to implement. Interventions within the repository are graded based on study quality, effect size, generalizability and implementation readiness — a framework aligned with recommendations made by a DGC action and research team workgroup in 2019.
“Our hope is that the repository of evidence that we are building will help focus attention on these and other emerging gaps. We envision a virtuous cycle in which schools and communities using the repository will give feedback about what is missing, which will spur new research, which in turn will provide more relevant guidance to practice,” the authors write.
To learn more about “The Handbook of Mental Health Communication,” visit its publisher’s website.
Eisenberg is a professor at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and a principal investigator of the Healthy Minds Network, which administers the national Healthy Minds Study and advances research on the mental health of college students through the development and testing of innovative programs and interventions. He also serves as co-investigator for the UCLA STAND ALACRITY Center’s Methods Core, which supports Center research through methodological and implementation expertise. The research in this chapter was supported in part by the DGC.
