Resource: Mental Health & High School Curriculum Guide

Developer: mentalhealthliteracy.org

The Mental Health & High School Curriculum Guide

The Mental Health & High School Curriculum Guide (The Guide) is a teacher-led mental health curriculum, designed to be delivered in modules for grades 7-10 students. Training materials are available for classroom teachers at no cost. The Guide is designed to maximize flexibility so it may be adapted to any classroom context and teaching timeline. The Guide is available in seven languages, and has been critically evaluated in geographically and linguistically diverse schools. The Guide was developed by a collaborative team of mental health experts, clinicians, and scientists from Alberta Health Services, and the departments of Psychiatry at Dalhousie University and the University of Alberta.

“Use of the Guide by classroom teachers provides a pedagogically familiar method of enhancing mental health literacy outcomes in a frugal, sustainable and system-enhancing manner.” - mentalhealthliteracy.org

Key Findings

The Mental Health and High School Curriculum Guide (The Guide) receives a ranking of ‘1A’ for having substantive evidence of effectiveness while being fully ready for wide-dissemination among its target audience.

The Guide has been shown to have significant and sustained positive effects (up to and including one year) on all key-pillars of Mental Health Literacy among secondary school students.

  • Knowledge
  • Help Seeking
  • Stigma
  • Obtaining & Maintaining Positive Mental Health
  • Recognition of Mental Disorders

The Curriculum Guide is fully-translated and available in the following:

  • English
  • French
  • Spanish
  • Bengali
  • Chinese (Mandarin)
  • German
  • Farsi
  • USA Edition: Washington State

More evidence is required to support preliminary findings of The Guide’s effectiveness in geographically and linguistically diverse classrooms. Studies in Wales, Germany, Nicaragua, and Tanzania show promising results, but require more rigorous research methods and/or replication of findings.

The website declares that additional materials may be required to fully implement the guide, with some cost to the consumer. Please consider the following:

  • We cannot verify if, or to what extent teachers who participated in evaluation studies of The Guide utilized purchasable materials.
  • Based on our understanding of The Guide and interpretation of the research, we assert that additional materials are not required to implement The Guide, or to derive significant and sustained benefits to students’ MHL.

The Guide Rating: 1A

evalutation rating guide 1A

For more information on our scoring system, criteria, and outcomes for The Guide, please see the Evaluation Process & Scoring page