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Teacher Mental Health Literacy is Associated with Student Literacy in the Adolescent Depression Awareness Program

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Abstract

The Adolescent Depression Awareness Program, developed by psychiatrists and psychiatric nurses at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is a depression literacy program delivered to high school students by teachers. This mode of delivery represents an effective and sustainable way to increase awareness of mental health, reduce stigma, improve early detection, and facilitate help-seeking behavior among adolescents. The present study explores the depression literacy and stigma of teachers and their students. Survey responses of 66 teachers and 6679 high school students about depression literacy and stigma pre- and post-education intervention were analyzed using a multilevel model fit in Mplus. Teacher depression literacy was significantly associated with student depression literacy [β = 0.199, SE = 0.095, p = 0.035, 95% CI (0.044, 0.355)] at the post-assessment, but was not associated with student stigma. Teacher stigma was not significantly related to student depression literacy or stigma in the post-assessment. These findings highlight the importance of optimizing teacher depression literacy in order to maximize student depression literacy while also diminishing concerns about the transmission of stigmatized beliefs from teachers to students.

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Acknowledgements

Holly Wilcox has received research grants from Janssen Research & Development.

Funding

This study was funded by NIH Grants R01MH095855 and K23MH090246.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Leslie Miller, Douglas D’Agati, Clarissa Alfes, Mary Beth Beaudry, Karen Swartz & Holly Wilcox

  2. Department of Mental Health, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, USA

    Rashelle Musci & Holly Wilcox

Authors
  1. Leslie Miller
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  2. Rashelle Musci
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  3. Douglas D’Agati
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  4. Clarissa Alfes
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  5. Mary Beth Beaudry
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  6. Karen Swartz
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  7. Holly Wilcox
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Leslie Miller.

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Conflict of interest

Leslie Miller, Rashelle Musci, Douglas D’Agati, Clarissa Alfes, Mary Beth Beaudry, Karen Swartz declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Miller, L., Musci, R., D’Agati, D. et al. Teacher Mental Health Literacy is Associated with Student Literacy in the Adolescent Depression Awareness Program. School Mental Health 11, 357–363 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-018-9281-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12310-018-9281-4

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