Mental health at school: the European Project Well-School-Tech

Adolescence and pre-adolescence are crucial moments for the promotion of mental health and the prevention of mental disorders, taking into account that up 50% of common mental disorders have their onset in adolescence, around 14 years of age.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that, worldwide, up to 20% of children and adolescents suffer from a problem of emotional development or behaviour and one out of eight suffer from a mental disorder.
The project 'Well-School-Tech' supported by the Erasmus+ Programme for school education of the European Community, aimed to provide secondary school students the appropriate skills to monitor and manage their level of mental well-being, through the development of a pedagogical tool that was used as a basis of good practices and expertise in the field of mental well-being exchanged among the partnership. Partners shared knowledge concerning mental well-being management in school as well as strategies to involve in the best way all the actors that play an important role in the mental well-being of students, i.e. teachers and family members.
Project objectives were: 1) to exchange good practices for mental well-being management in the school context, in order to collect methodologies aimed at the students’ well-being with the direct support of the actors involved in the well-being and learning process of students i.e. teachers and parents; 2) to provide students with tools to manage mental well-being, improve communication skills, increase self awareness and problem solving abilities; 3) to produce high quality resources for professionals and improve their competencies to deal with diversified groups of students, with the use of new technologies and learner-centred pedagogical approaches.

With the active participation of students, the pedagogical resources collected among the partnership were adapted and transferred to multimedia tools (website, videos, apps), available in 5 European languages, in order to have an innovative and more attractive approach with the target group and cater their needs. The analysis carried out in the first phase of the project helped to identify the key needs of students while the exchange of good practices facilitated a more efficient strategy to address target groups’ well-being needs. These results provided a ground on which build the educational resources and adapt the programme. The training activities targeting teachers helped the first target group to better understand well-being needs of students, the best approaches to operate within school settings and guarantee the well-being of their learners and the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in educational contexts. Teachers delivered focus groups with students in order to identify the most appropriate communication methods for their age group and develop multimedia material.

The pilot course together with the multimedia resources based on the manual increased students’ psychological well-being and quality of life, thus fostering a healthy environment for teaching and learning.
The activities foreseen in the project produced the following results: - improved learner-centered resources for well-being management in the school context; - improved competencies of teachers/educators in managing mental well-being in school settings by using different approaches and ICT-based methodologies, - increased ability of secondary school students to manage their mental well-being.

The Partnership
P1 - VIKO - Vilniaus Kolegija (Lithuania)
P2 - Promimpresa Srl (Italy)
P3 - Istituto Superiore di Sanità (Italy)
P4 - Europa Training (United Kingdom)
P5 - ULO - University of Lodz (Poland)
P6 - ECQ Ltd. - European Center for Quality (Bulgaria)


Per info
Antonella Gigantesco, Istituto Superiore di Sanità, Centro di Riferimento per le Scienze Comportamentali e la Salute Mentale
antonella.gigantesco@iss.it