Improving mental health literacy of educational professionals: feasibility and preliminary effectiveness of an adapted intervention LEARN-NL

Background: The high prevalence rate of adolescent mental health problems is a widespread global concern. Educational professionals in secondary education are in a prime position to address this but often lack knowledge and competencies regarding mental health (‘mental health literacy’) for this. We developed LEARN-NL, an internet-based self-paced intervention that is promising to improve mental health literacy among educational professionals. The aim of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of the LEARN-NL intervention in terms of acceptability, implementation, and preliminary effectiveness. Methods: We performed a mixed methods feasibility study with n = 29 educational professionals in the Netherlands. Questionnaires on educational professionals’ mental health literacy, assessed by the Mental Health Literacy and Capacity Survey for Educators (MHLCSE) and subscales of the Knowledge and Attitudes to Mental Health Scales (KAMHS), were administered before and after the intervention to assess preliminary effectiveness of LEARN-NL. We further interviewed participants (n = 9) after completing the intervention to assess acceptability and implementation. Quantitative data were analyzed pre- vs. post-training, qualitative data with thematic analysis. Results: The LEARN-NL intervention was perceived by the educational professionals that completed the training as acceptable and useful, especially in terms of three main themes: (1) Participant satisfaction, (2) rich diversity of topics covered, and (3) better mental health literacy of educational professionals to support adolescents. LEARN-NL could be implemented as planned and we identified two main themes: (1) Format, and (2) conditions for broad implementation and impact. We further found preliminary effectiveness of LEARN-NL intervention in increasing mental health literacy of educational professionals, in terms of self-perceived awareness, knowledge, and comfort, and decreased stigma (p < 0.001). Conclusions: LEARN-NL is feasible as it is acceptable and implementable as planned for improving mental health literacy of educational professionals and shows promising preliminary effectiveness. Larger-scale effectiveness studies should be performed to further investigate the intervention.