About the project
Mental illness is a significant health burden worldwide and the health problem with the heaviest financial burden in Norway. Half of chronic mental disorders emerge before the age of 14, and mental health problems in youth are increasing.
The Norwegian government has implemented the interdisciplinary topic "Health and life skills" (HLS) in primary and secondary education to teach pupils about promoting health and self-efficacy. School-based interventions may improve mental health and academic performance, but their effects depend on the quality of implementation. There are significant variations in how HLS is implemented within and across schools due to a lack of national guidelines and a reliance on teachers’ professional judgment. Delayed implementation for some grades and longitudinal nationwide registry linkages forms a natural experiment, providing a rare opportunity to investigate the impact of diverse implementation methods of a politically determined, long-term and population-wide measure.
Objectives
This interdisciplinary study aims to evaluate how variations in the implementation of HLS relate to the intervention’s effect on pupils' mental health, quality of life, school environment, academic performance, and dropout.
To address this, we will collect new HLS implementation data from 5,000 teachers/employees, 1,000 school principals, and 180 school owners. Information from these critical samples will be combined with prior linked data for 750,000 pupils from existing national registries and extensive surveys, including educational, health and background information.
The data collection is organised by NIFU, and you can find more information regarding the HeaLS data collection here. Schools who want to participate in the project can send an email til heals@nifu.no
Financing
Funded by the European Union (ERC, HeaLS, 101088481). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
