Mental health awareness: what we have gained, and what we did not expect

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Mental health awareness campaigns have reduced stigma and encouraged help-seeking, but a new review asks whether they also have unintended psychological costs such as inflating distress, driving self-diagnosis, and overwhelming services.

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Supporting student mental health after natural disasters: What role can schools play?

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Meta-analysis of 13 studies found school-based interventions reduced PTSD, depression and anxiety after natural disasters, with effects strongest immediately post-intervention.

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When helping hurts: potential harms from CBT and mindfulness in schools

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With classroom mental health programmes on the rise, this review raises an important question: are we doing more harm than good? The evidence suggests universal interventions may not be right for everyone.

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AWARE and INSPIRE: school mental health trials show mixed results and unexpected harms

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The Education for Wellbeing programme, funded by the Department for Education, was one of England’s largest school-based mental health research initiatives. It included two major trials (AWARE and INSPIRE) testing universal mental health approaches in schools between 2018 and 2024. What did these big studies really find?

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Tackling social determinants will reduce the global mental health burden: mega-blog of current prevention strategies

Social determinants such as early life adversity, socioeconomic disadvantage and ethnoracial discrimination all contribute to the development of mental ill health, with marginalised and minoritised communities being impacted the most.

Xiaolin Guo, a MSc student in Global Mental Health at the University of Glasgow, and Nina Higson-Sweeney summarise a recent narrative review exploring the social determinants of mental health and associated prevention strategies.

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Universal DBT intervention in schools: help or hindrance?

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Sofiia Kornatska reviews a non-randomised trial exploring a dialectical behaviour therapy (DBT) based universal intervention on adolescent social and emotional well-being in Australian schools.

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What’s BESST for young people? Efficacy of CBT-informed workshops for stress management in older adolescents

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Matthias Schwannauer explores the BESST cluster randomised controlled trial, which is out today in The Lancet Psychiatry. BESST stands for Brief Educational Workshops in Secondary Schools Trial.

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Mental health support teams in schools: an evaluation of the UK Trailblazer programme

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Lucinda Powell reflects on an early evaluation of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Trailblazer programme, which looked at the first 25 ‘Trailblazer’ sites implementing mental health support teams in schools.

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Building bridges between schools and mental health services to improve youth mental health support

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In her latest blog, Ariadna Albajara Saenz summarises a recent paper reporting on two pilot trials exploring partnerships between schools and mental health services to test the utilisation and acceptability of specialist liaison and teacher skills training.

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Equipping young adolescents with wellbeing skills: does a universal, classroom-based CBT intervention promote positive mental health?

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Emily Hards and Maria Loades summarise a cluster randomised controlled trial exploring the effectiveness of universal process-based CBT for positive mental health in early adolescence.

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