Abstract

Mental health literacy (MHL) is a four-component concept that includes mental health and mental illness knowledge and understanding, information about mental illness treatments, decreased stigma towards mental illness and improved help-seeking efficacy. The MHL intervention programs and MHL measures in the present literature focus on adult populations; MHL measures and interventions for adolescents need more attention from developing and undeveloped non-Western countries. We aim to analyze the psychometric properties of some MHL measures using factor analysis and reliability tests. We also present the cultural adaptation of the Mental Health and High School Curriculum Guide – a MHL intervention proposed by Kutcher, Wei, McLuckie, and Bullock (2013) – using some guidelines presented in literature. Our initial sample size consisted of 319 adolescents. Due to missing data the number of cases we used for each measurement’s analysis fluctuates between 252 and 302. Results show adequate construct validity and internal consistency for most of the MHL measures included in the study, but we conclude that more research is needed, especially for the MH knowledge measure, which indicated mixed results.

Keywords: Adolescent MHL measures;MHL knowledge; MHL stigma; MHL help-seeking school mental health literacy (MHL) intervention