Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Research Protocols
Date Submitted: Nov 14, 2025
Date Accepted: Feb 23, 2026
School-based universal mental health prevention programmes for children aged 6 to 9 years in low-income and middle-income countries: Protocol for a Scoping Review
ABSTRACT
Background:
While the onset of most mental health conditions occurs in later childhood or adolescence, the early years present an important window for prevention. Globally, universal school-based prevention interventions have shown to be effective in promoting child mental health. Nevertheless, little is known about universal school-based prevention programmes targeting children aged 6 to 9 years in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs).
Objective:
The objective of the proposed scoping review is to identify promising, potentially feasible, and possibly evidence-based school-based universal prevention mental health programmes for children aged 6 to 9 years in LMICs.
Methods:
The scoping review will be conducted according to the JBI framework developed by Arksey and O'Malley, with enhancements proposed by Levac et al. Eligible studies will focus on universal prevention school-based mental health interventions with feasibility outcomes and/or mental health outcomes, which include children aged 6 – 9 years. Additional inclusion criteria are all peer-reviewed published and unpublished studies including grey literature such as thesis/ dissertations, conference proceedings and papers or government reports and publications. There are no limits to the date of publication, but only studies published in English and conducted in LMICs will be selected. Major databases such as CENTRAL, PubMed (Medline), SCOPUS (EMBASE), and EBSCOHOST (PsycINFO, CINHAL, PsycARTICLES, ERIC, Teachers Reference Centre, Academic Search Premier, and SocIndex) will be searched. Additionally, ProQuest and Google scholar along with the websites for trial registrations (e.g. ICTRP), will be searched for grey literature. The review will be reported according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Institutional approval was obtained from the University of Cape Town Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC REF: 567/2025).
Results:
The search strategy has been finalized, and data extraction will commence in January 2026. The scoping review findings will be submitted to a relevant peer-reviewed journal by July 2026 and presented at conferences.
Conclusions:
From the scoping review, we expect to identify one or several programmes that show some level of effectiveness or feasibility and acceptability suitable for children aged 6 to 9 years old in LMICs. Clinical Trial: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/W42CE
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
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.