Perceived School Climate Intervention Improves Mental Health Of High School Students:A Study Of Wise Intervention

The World Health Organization(WHO)has called on governments to pay attention to adolescent mental health,which has become an important public health problem worldwide.Policymakers and educators in China have been paying close attention to adolescent mental health for a long time,however,adolescent mental health in China has been still worrying.Therefore,adolescent mental health in China needs to be prevented and intervened urgently.In response to the call of WHO,this study took the dual-factor model of mental health,the stage-environment fit theory,self-determination theory and risk and resilience model as the theoretical basis,and takes the school context as the background of intervention,examining whether a brief wise intervention of perceived school climate could effectively improve adolescent depression and subjective well-being(research issue 1).In addition,we further explored the mediating(research issue 2)and moderating(research issue 3)mechanisms.Research Issue 1:Examined whether perceived school climate intervention could effectively improve adolescents' mental health(depression and subjective well-being).Research Issue 2:Examined how perceived school climate intervention works,that is,whether the intervention improved adolescent mental health through basic psychological needs satisfaction(need for relatedness,competence and autonomy).Research Issue 3:Examined whether all adolescents are equally influenced by perceived school climate intervention,that is,whether stressful life events moderated the processes of whether and how works of the intervention.A double-blind randomized controlled trial was used to test three research issues.At the start of the fall semester,this study randomly recruited a sample of 297 adolescents(Mage = 15.29 years,SD = 0.40)from two high schools in Wuhan.The experimental procedures included open-ended survey,pre-test(assessed demographics,perceived school climate,depression,subjective well-being,basic psychological needs satisfaction,stressful life events),intervention,post-test 1(assessed perceived school climate,basic psychological needs satisfaction)and post-test 2(assessed depression,subjective well-being),which lasted three and a half months.The preliminary analyses in SPSS showed that:(a)random assignment to trial conditions was succeeded;(b)school and need for relatedness were missing at random,except for these,all of variables were missing completely at random;(c)manipulation check was not significant.More samples and longer time windows may be needed to better capture significant changes in perceived school climate.The main analyses in Mplus showed that:(a)perceived school climate intervention could reduce adolescents' depression and improve their subjective well-being;(b)perceived school climate intervention affected adolescents'depression and subjective well-being through need for relatedness and competence;(c)stressful life events only interacted with experimental conditions in negatively predicting need for autonomy.These findings provide enlightenment for adolescent mental health intervention.The explorations of intervention perspective(perceived school climate)and intervention form(wise intervention)may help to fill gaps in the existing literature and provide some guidance for the prevention and intervention of adolescent mental health in China.In addition,the explorations of the mediating and moderating mechanisms are helpful to develop more targeted interventions from multiple perspectives.Finally,our findings also suggest both the promise and the necessity of enhancing the soft strength of school culture.