Evaluating the benefits of a youth mental health curriculum for students in Nicaragua: a parallel-group, controlled pilot investigation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background. High rates of mental illness and addictions are well documented among youth in Nicaragua. Limited mental health services, poor mental health knowledge and stigma reduce help-seeking. The Mental Health Curriculum (MHC) is a Canadian school-based program that has shown a positive impact on such contributing factors. This pilot project evaluated the impact of the MHC on mental wellness and functioning among youth in Leon, Nicaragua. Methods. High school and university students (aged 14–25 years) were assigned to intervention (12-week MHC; n = 567) and control (wait-list; n = 346) groups in a non-randomized design. Both groups completed measures of mental health knowledge, stigma and function at baseline and 12 weeks. Multivariate analyses and repeated measures analyses were used to compare group outcomes. Results. At baseline, intervention students showed higher substance use (mean difference [MD] = 0.24) and lower perceived stress (MD = −1.36) than controls ( p < 0.05); there were no other group differences in function. At 12 weeks, controlling for baseline differences, intervention students reported significantly higher mental health knowledge (MD = 1.75), lower stigma (MD = 1.78), more adaptive coping (MD = 0.82), better lifestyle choices (MD = 0.06) and lower perceived stress (MD = −1.63) ( p < 0.05) than controls. The clinical significance as measured by effect sizes was moderate for mental health knowledge, small to moderate for stigma and modest for the other variables. Substance use also decreased among intervention students to similar levels as controls (MD = 0.03) ( p > 0.05). Conclusions. This pilot investigation demonstrates the benefits of the MHC in a low-and-middle-income youth population. The findings replicate results found in Canadian student populations and support its cross-cultural applicability.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".