Clinical Research Directory

Evaluation of the Effectiveness of Teen Mental Health First Aid in Secondary School Students in Hong Kong

Sponsor: TN Foo Centre for Positive Mental Health

Summary

Mental health problems in adolescents are on the rise worldwide especially after COVID -19 pandemic. Early detection and intervention should help to reduce the adverse impact of the mental illness on the adolescent. Yet the adolescent may not be able to recognize mental illness, have stigma against the mentally ill and mental health services, and may not seek help even with mental illness. The local situation in Hong Kong has been reviewed and presented in a separate article (Lai, 2024). The high prevalence of psychiatric conditions in Hong Kong adolescents has been reported (Chan et al, 2025). Teen Mental Health First Aid (t MHFA) is a course developed in Australia for the promotion of mental health literacy including awareness of mental illness, reduction of stigmatizing attitudes towards people with mental illness, and increase in appropriate help-seeking attitude and behavior among adolescents with emerging mental health problems (Hart, 2016). Mental Health Association of Hong Kong has run the mental health first aid courses in Hong Kong since 2004. The teen MHFA course has been translated and attuned to the local context recently. MHAHK has been funded by the Hong Kong Jockey Club in a two-year project in the development of a quality mental health campus in twenty secondary schools. In the project there will be mental health education programs for teachers, parents and students and mental health promotion activities in the schools. Teen MHFA will be provided to the students in the schools. It is a three-hour course separated into three separate sessions taught by trained instructors of MHAHK. The study will obtain a baseline information about the awareness of mental illness, the attitude towards the mentally ill and help seeking behavior of secondary school students, and to verify the effectiveness of the teen MHFA course in promotion of mental health literacy of the participants, and to guide the further refinement and development of an effective course. It is hoped that the teen MHFA course can be available to all secondary schools and can help adolescents to develop appropriate mental health literacy at this important phase of development before reaching adulthood.

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