A school mental health literacy curriculum resource training approach: effects on Tanzanian teachers’ mental health knowledge, stigma and help-seeking efficacy

Mental health literacy (MHL) is foundational for mental health promotion, prevention, stigma reduction, and care; School supported information pertaining to MHL in sub-Saharan Africa is extremely limited, including in Tanzania. Successful application of a school MHL curriculum resource may be an effective way to increase teacher MHL and therefore help to improve mental health outcomes for students.

Secondary school teachers in Tanzania were trained on the African Guide (AG) a school MHL curriculum resource culturally adapted from a Canadian MHL resource (The Guide) for use in Africa. Teacher training workshops on the classroom application of the AG were used to evaluate its impact on mental health literacy in a sample of Tanzanian Secondary school teachers. Pre-post training assessment of participant knowledge and attitudes was conducted. Help-seeking efficacy for teachers themselves and their interventions for students, friends, family members and peers were determined.

This journal article published in the International Journal of Mental Health Systems examines the impact of face-to-face teacher training that was part of our Integrated Mental Health project in Tanzania. While this article does not touch on the interactive rural radio program which was a major part of this project, these results are relevant in that they were achieved the in context of a mass media (radio) campaign on youth mental health in Tanzania.

For more information on what we did with radio in this project please check out our project outcome evaluation report here.