PROmoting Mental health in Schools through Education
In the media
- Teenage pupils get class therapy
BBC News - Teenage depression to be tackled in class
The Guardian
The PROMISE Project is a randomised controlled trial examining the effectiveness of school based programmes in the prevention of depressive symptoms for high risk adolescents aged 12 to 16.
Project aim
The aim of the trial is to investigate whether young people can learn skills during their Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) lessons that will help them to stay happy and positive in their mood and help prevent depression.
The trial will compare three types of PSHE:
- The Resourceful Adolescent Programme (RAP), which uses a Cognitive Behaviour Therapy based approach
- Enhanced PSHE (attention), where teachers are joined by two researchers to provide additional attention and support
- Usual PSHE lessons delivered by the school.
Project involvement
The project will last until July 2012 and involves nine mixed comprehensive secondary schools in Bath and North East Somerset, Bristol, Nottingham, and Wiltshire.
- Over 700 young people in our first school helped us to pilot the project in the academic year 2008/2009.
- 5,048 young people volunteered to take part in the main trial during the academic year 2009/2010.
We will be asking young people to fill in questionnaires at the beginning of the project (screening and baseline) and again after six and twelve months. The primary outcome will be depression scores at twelve months. We will also be looking at the cost-effectiveness of the RAP and Enhanced PSHE programs and at the practical aspects of running these within the UK secondary education system.
The University of Bath will be leading the study in collaboration with academic colleagues at the Universities of Bristol, Nottingham and the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter.
Funding
This project is funded by the NIHR Health Technology Assessment programme project number 06/37/04).
