Youth Aware of Mental Health Programme – multiple countries

Abstract

Suicide was the fourth leading cause of death among 15-29 year-olds globally in 2019. Researchers have established links between suicide and mental health disorders as well as sudden crises or life stresses. Large proportions of psychopathological changes have their onset in childhood and adolescence, which makes young people an especially important target group for prevention and intervention measures.

The Youth Aware of Mental Health Programme (YAM) targets preventable deaths from suicide. YAM is, or has been, active in several countries, including Australia, Austria, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Norway, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as in India and Romania.

Description

YAM is a universal, school-based intervention involving booklets, posters, and five hours of instruction by two trained adults over three weeks. All instructors have previous experience in working with young people and receive rigorous training before being certified. The programme aims to help students reflect on risk and protective factors associated with suicide, as well as on different coping strategies in difficult situations. YAM aims to help grow solidarity among young people and promote positive mental health practises.

Instructors focus on creating a safe environment and valuing young people as experts on their own mental health, relying on role play and student-led discussions. Putting student experience centre stage helps ensure the cultural adaptability of the programme.

Outcomes

More than 85 000 teenagers across 16 countries have participated in YAM and there is strong evidence that YAM is effective at preventing suicide in young people. It was evaluated in a cluster-randomised controlled trial (the Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE) study) covering pupils with a median age of 15 across ten European countries and 168 schools. After 12 months, the risk of a student reporting a suicide attempt was more than 50% smaller in the group receiving the YAM intervention than in the control group. Out of 1 000 pupils, 11 attempted suicides in the control group while only five did in the treatment group. Figures were similar for severe suicidal ideation: the risk in the treatment group was 49.6% lower relative to the control group.

Another study considers whether YAM operates through interaction with five coping strategies captured in the SEYLE questionnaire, i.e. learn, help-seeking, sports, arts, and fight. The authors find that the YAM intervention was particularly effective among those who did not frequently use the suicide protection strategies of learn and help-seeking (strategies that tend to be efficient in preventing suicide ideation). Finally, examining experiences and opinions captured in the SEYLE, another study shows that adolescents both learned about mental health and enjoyed the experience of participating in the programme.

Further reading

[1] Kahn, J. et al. (2020), “Influence of coping strategies on the efficacy of YAM (Youth Aware of Mental Health): a universal school-based suicide preventive program”, European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, Vol. 29/12, pp. 1671-1681, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00787-020-01476-w.

[2] Lindow, J. et al. (2020), “The Youth Aware of Mental Health Intervention: Impact on Help Seeking, Mental Health Knowledge, and Stigma in U.S. Adolescents”, Journal of Adolescent Health, Vol. 67/1, pp. 101-107, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.01.006.

[3] Wasserman, C. et al. (2012), “Suicide prevention for youth - a mental health awareness program: lessons learned from the Saving and Empowering Young Lives in Europe (SEYLE) intervention study”, BMC Public Health, Vol. 12/1, https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-776.

[4] Wasserman, D. et al. (2015), “School-based suicide prevention programmes: the SEYLE cluster-randomised, controlled trial”, The Lancet, Vol. 385/9977, pp. 1536-1544, https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(14)61213-7.

[5] YAM (2023), Youth Aware of Mental Health, https://www.y-a-m.org/.

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