Evaluating Students from a Public School: Mental Health Promotion and Prevention in High School

摘要

The aim of the current study is to investigate emotional and mental health changes causing psychiatric distress enough to affect the learning process of high school students. Students from three school years of a federal public school in Santa Maria County-RS-Brazil participated in the study. Ninety-four (94) out of 115 students answered the Self Report Questionnaire-SRQ-20, which is a World Health Organization (WHO) tool used worldwide in primary care level in order to identify Minor Mental or Psychiatric Disorders (MMD/MPD). The total of 32.98% of the participants recorded sufficient scores in psychological suffering. It is worth encouraging educators’ knowledge about mental health, as well as their continuous training through Educational Modules for emotional Promotion, Prevention and Learning, which are contextualized in the science-teaching content, as well as improving students’ information level on the subject. School is the strategically privileged territory for these actions, since it is the place where children and adolescents spend most of their time. Thus, it enables acquiring knowledge and empowering mental health promotion skills.