A School-Based Intervention to Reduce Stigma & Promote Mental-Health Service Use

The curriculum intervention is a three- module, three-hour curriculum delivered by teachers in sixth grade classrooms over a three- to six-day period. The curriculum is designed to increase knowledge and improve attitudes about mental illnesses so as to improve the school climate with respect to mental illness stigma and encourage help seeking for youth in need.

The contact intervention involves two college students-a 27-year-old male with a history of bipolar I disorder and a 24-year-old female with a history of bipolar II disorder-who each make a ten-minute in-class presentation (20 minutes total) describing onset and course of their symptoms, hospitalizations and treatments, their feelings about the illness, coping strategies, and impact of the illness on social relationships and functioning at school and work.

"The materials intervention is implemented by teachers who prominently display posters in the classroom for two weeks and provide students with bookmarks. The materials focus on individuals' with mental illnesses emphasizing their personal traits and abilities as opposed to language that labels a person as mentally ill."