A Study on Level of Mental Health Education Program Effectiveness on Reducing Mental Disorders in Tehran City High School Students

The purpose of this paper is the study of effective level of mental healtheducation program on reducing mental disorders. To this aim, 440 highschool students at the pretest phase selected randomly with multi-stagesampling method among Tehran city high school students. Then, General Health Questionnaire (GHQ–28) as a mental health and mentaldisorders screening instrument was administered. The present studycutoff point is 23 with 79. 2 and 0. 91 as sensitivity and specificityrespectively. Also, for determining reliability, Chronbach alpha was usedand 0. 86 coefficient was obtained that is statistically satisfactory. Givento the cutoff point (> 23), the 80 (%18. 2) students scored above cutoffpoint. At the treatment phase for determining level of effectiveness ofmental health education program, two matched experimental group andcontrol group according to dependent variable, age and gender wereformed and experimental groups were exposed to mental healtheducation program. At the posttest phase, after presenting treatmentvariable (mental health education program) to experimental groupsversus non-presenting variable to control groups, both groups weretested with GHQ – 28 again. The research results indicated that mentalhealth education was more effective for experimental group vs. controlgroup, in other words it led to reduction of anxiety and insomniasymptoms, social dysfunction symptoms and severe depressionsymptoms, nevertheless, but it did not make difference in terms ofphysical symptoms between experimental and control groups.