Development and evaluation of a youth mental health community awareness campaign – The Compass Strategy

BACKGROUND: Early detection and treatment of mental disorders in adolescents and young adults can lead to better health outcomes. Mental health literacy is a key to early recognition and help seeking. Whilst a number of population health initiatives have attempted to improve mental health literacy, none to date have specifically targeted young people nor have they applied the rigorous standards of population health models now accepted as best practice in other health areas. This paper describes the outcomes from the application of a health promotion model to the development, implementation and evaluation of a community awareness campaign designed to improve mental health literacy and early help seeking amongst young people. METHOD: The Compass Strategy was implemented in the western metropolitan Melbourne and Barwon regions of Victoria, Australia. The Precede-Proceed Model guided the population assessment, campaign strategy development and evaluation. The campaign included the use of multimedia, a website, and an information telephone service. Multiple levels of evaluation were conducted. This included a cross-sectional telephone survey of mental health literacy undertaken before and after 14 months of the campaign using a quasi-experimental design. Randomly selected independent samples of 600 young people aged 12–25 years from the experimental region and another 600 from a comparison region were interviewed at each time point. A series of binary logistic regression analyses were used to measure the association between a range of campaign outcome variables and the predictor variables of region and time. RESULTS: The program was judged to have an impact on the following variables, as indicated by significant region-by-time interaction effects (p < 0.05): awareness of mental health campaigns, self-identified depression, help for depression sought in the previous year, correct estimate of prevalence of mental health problems, increased awareness of suicide risk, and a reduction in perceived barriers to help seeking. These effects may be underestimated because media distribution error resulted in a small amount of print material "leaking" into the comparison region. CONCLUSION: We believe this is the first study to apply the rigorous standards of a health promotion model including the use of a control region to a mental health population intervention. The program achieved many of its aims despite the relatively short duration and moderate intensity of the campaign

Field-study science classrooms as positive and enjoyable learning environments

We investigated differences between field-study classrooms and traditional science classrooms in terms of the learning environment and students’ attitudes to science, as well as the differential effectiveness of field-study classrooms for students differing in sex and English proficiency. A modified version of selected scales from the What Is Happening In this Class? questionnaire was used to assess the learning environment, whereas students’ attitudes were assessed with a shortened version of a scale from the Test of Science Related Attitudes. A sample of 765 grade 5 students from 17 schools responded to the learning environment and attitude scales in terms of both their traditional science classrooms and classrooms at a field-study centre in Florida. Large effect sizes supported the effectiveness of the field-studies classroom in terms of both the learning environment and student attitudes. Relative to the home school science class, the field-study class was considerably more effective for students with limited English proficiency than for native English speakers

An approach to modelling the impact of prehistoric farming on Holocene landscape phosphorus dynamics

The lake sediment phosphorus (P) record at Hatch Mere (Cheshire, UK) is investigated to assess the role of human activity in modifying Holocene landscape P export dynamics, and to develop an approach to incorporating this effect into a pre-existing long-term, large-scale landscape model of natural P export. Analysis of the lake sediment record shows that the catchment P yield is low and constant prior to ca. 6000 BP, but then increases up to the present day. This increase occurs in steps that coincide with the Neolithic, Bronze Age and Medieval periods, and the first half of the 20th century, consistent with an anthropogenic cause. Such an interpretation is supported by close correlation of the P export flux with the estimated regional population density. We demonstrate that the effect of human activity on landscape P dynamics can be incorporated into the existing P export model by scaling the soil secondary P leakage rate coefficient to population density. The findings of this study suggest that lake sediment P accumulation rate data may provide a novel method for estimating prehistoric local population density. Additionally, we show that the pre-Neolithic landscape P export was low, and we reject the widely held view that Hatch Mere is naturally eutrophic.</p

Challenges in Covering Health Disparities in Local News Media: An Exploratory Analysis Assessing Views of Journalists

Abstract available at publisher's website