Evaluation of “Healthy Learning. Together”, an Easily Applicable Mental Health Promotion Tool for Students Aged 9 to 18 Years

Abstract

Schools play an important role in adolescents’ health promotion. Due to the limited resources of teachers, there is a need for short-time interventions that can be easily implemented in a regular class without extensive training. Therefore, the tool “Healthy learning. Together.” was developed within a joint venture research project in Jena, Germany. The tool consists of a box with 60 exercises and a poster exhibition for students in 5th grade and higher. One thousand one hundred and forty four (1144) students (56% female) from nine schools were assessed at an interval of 10 weeks in a parallelized pre-post-design with class-wise assignment to intervention group (IG) and control group (CG). In the IG, regular teachers implemented the health promotion tool. Before and after the intervention social integration, class climate, self-efficacy (as primary outcomes) and mental and physical wellbeing (as secondary outcomes) were measured using standardized questionnaires. ANCOVA analysis revealed that students of the IG showed more positive changes on primary outcomes with small effect sizes. Additional implementation outcomes showed high teacher and student enthusiasm but sometimes low exposure rates. Regarding the relatively small amount of time and preparation for teachers to get noticeable effects, the introduced tool is suitable as a first step into health promotion for schools.