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Systematic Review
The authors state: "The report sets out the evidence on the effectiveness of interventions for: Promotion: Interventions to enhance mental health and wellbeing including social and emotional learning interventions, positive psychology interventions, mindfulness-based interventions, positive youth development interventions, and mental health literacy interventions. Prevention: Interventions to prevent mental health difficulties including anxiety and depression prevention interventions, and suicide prevention interventions. Behaviour: Interventions to prevent behavioural difficulties including aggression and violence prevention interventions, bullying prevention interventions, and sexual violence prevention interventions."
The authors state:
"Summary of key findings: Universal social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions have good evidence of enhancing young people’s social and emotional skills and reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety in the short term. There is good evidence that universal and targeted cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) interventions are effective in reducing internalising symptoms in young people. There is limited evidence on the effectiveness of school-based interventions designed to prevent suicide and self-harm. Violence prevention interventions have been shown to have a small but positive effect on aggressive behaviour in the short term. Bullying prevention interventions are effective in reducing the frequency of traditional and cyberbullying victimisation and perpetration. There is promising evidence on the effectiveness of interventions designed to reduce sexual violence and harassment when delivered to young people at risk of experiencing sexual violence. The impact of depression and anxiety prevention interventions and violence prevention interventions tends be stronger when they are targeted at young people with elevated but subclinical symptoms. In addition to reducing mental health and behavioural difficulties it is essential to support the development of social, emotional and behavioural competencies at a universal level. There are a limited number of interventions which report evidence of improving mental health and behavioural outcomes among diverse groups and an even smaller number of and an even smaller number of interventions specifically designed for and evaluated with minority ethnic groups. Findings from these studies do, however, suggest promising impact on mental health and behavioural outcomes when delivered at both universal and targeted level. Universal interventions can be effectively delivered by teachers; however, there is no evidence that teacher-delivered interventions are effective in addressing the needs of students with symptoms of depression or anxiety. High-quality programme implementation is critical to achieving positive outcomes."
The authors state:
"In this review we examined the latest evidence on the effectiveness of school-based interventions designed to: • enhance young people’s mental health and wellbeing • reduce/prevent mental health difficulties including anxiety and depression, self-harm and suicide • reduce/prevent behavioural difficulties including aggression, bullying and conduct problems. Drawing together the evidence from 34 systematic reviews published since 2010 and 97 primary studies published over the past three years, this information provides a comprehensive and up to date summary of what works, for whom and under what circumstances"