“Mental Health Literacy: How to obtain and maintain positive mental health” is the title of this month’s editorial in “Frontiers in Psychology“, authored by researchers from CINTESIS – Center for Health Technology and Services Research.
The authors, including researcher Carlos Sequeira, stress that it is time to move from opinion articles and observational studies to another type of research.
“The needs, especially in children and young adults, are clearly identified and tend to be consensual: there is a lack of mental health literacy, although the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the discussion on this topic,” they say.
Therefore, “it is mandatory to develop interventions to promote mental health literacy, and evaluate their effectiveness, efficiency and cost-effectiveness.”
For the researchers, the scientific community must be “committed” to this goal, but it is not enough. Also “governments and decision-makers must assume a central role in this mission”.
One of the proposals is to include mental health in the subjects taught at school. Another is to ensure that there is a mental health nurse and/or psychologist in every school.
“A serious investment in mental health literacy has costs, but it will certainly reduce, for example, psychiatric hospitalizations in the future, which will benefit not only society but also the economy,” they claim.
The article is authored by Carlos Sequeira (CINTESIS@RISE and Nursing School of Porto), Francisco Sampaio (CINTESIS), Lara Guedes de Pinho (University of Évora), Odete Araújo (University of Minho), Teresa Lluch Canut (University of Barcelona) and Lia Sousa (Higher Health Institute of Vale do Ave).