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Educators’ Perspectives on a Mental Health Check-Up Model for Adolescents: Qualitative Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Schools play a critical role in identifying adolescent mental health needs early, yet the effectiveness of school-based strategies often depends on how well health information is communicated to educators.
Objective:
This study explores how pedagogical leaders perceive a proposed model for adolescent mental health check-ups and identifies key factors for designing effective communication tools between healthcare professionals and schools.
Methods:
Two participatory workshops were conducted with 44 pedagogical coordinators and educational counselors from elite private schools in São Paulo, Brazil. Structured group discussions and collaborative design activities were used to elicit responses to proposed mental health report formats. Data were analyzed thematically using an inductive approach supported by manual coding and cross-checking by two independent reviewers. No software was used; inter-rater reliability was achieved through iterative discussion.
Results:
Participants expressed a strong preference for mental health reports that are clear, context-sensitive, and co-developed with educators. Key themes included the need for pedagogical rather than clinical language, the importance of mediation by coordinators, and the value of aggregate data for family engagement and institutional planning. Co-creation of communication tools was reported to enhance educators’ sense of relevance and confidence in discussing mental health. These preferences were consistently reported across participants regardless of years of experience, suggesting shared epistemic needs across the field.
Conclusions:
The study highlights the value of user-informed communication models in mental health screening. Co-created tools aligned with pedagogical practices are more likely to be used and trusted. Effective communication design should be prioritized alongside the development of screening instruments themselves. Further research is needed to adapt this approach to low-resource public school contexts.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.