An Evidence Based Practice Training and Educational Curriculum for Adolescent Mental Health Promotion

Abstract

Background: The adolescent age population is subject to inherent risks due to the slow rate of their neurobiochemical development, which poses additional challenges for appropriate cognitive functioning. There are additional risk factors that influence the inherent risks of adolescence, but only one the risk factors for mental health can be impacted by healthcare providers. The prevalence rate of mental health disorders, worldwide and in Alaska, in adolescents continues to rise, indicating that this is a priority age to promote the development of positive mental health. The Positive Youth Development (PYD) framework is a strength-based perspective that has demonstrated and empirically supported outcomes for the development of protective assets, life skills, and competencies. Primary care providers are at a disadvantage to address the cultivation of mental health promotion due to time constraints within the primary care setting. The collaboration of pediatric primary care providers and community-based programs can provide a solution to address this healthcare gap through the use of a PYD evidence-based practice educational curriculum. Purpose: The purpose of this DNP project was to create a PYD evidence based educational curriculum that can be taught to and used by local youth engagement community-based programs for adolescent mental health promotion. A secondary purpose of this DNP project was to have the PYD program for adolescent mental health promotion evaluated by content experts for understandability and actionability. Methods: A comprehensive training program and associated educational curriculum PYD program for adolescent mental health promotion was written by the author, presented in a narrated PowerPoint presentation that was emailed to eight content experts that resided in either Arizona or Alaska who were nursing faculty members in community and/or pediatric health. The panel of experts reviewed the educational presentation using the Patient Educational Material’s Assessment Tool for Audio Visual (PEMAT-AV) and returned the PEMAT-AV excel sheet, which auto scored for the understandability and actionability components of the program. Results: The eight content experts returned completed PEMAT-AV tools and the mean actionability score was 96.86% and mean understandability score was 95% of the PYD program for adolescent mental health promotion. Discussion: The educational curriculum is a strong program as evidenced by the high mean scores for understandability and actionability, indicating the program is a tool for adolescent mental health promotion that can be understood and implemented by viewers. Additionally, individual feedback from content experts deemed it a dire need in the Anchorage community that should be explored for implementation within the community, which would require additional research and evaluation.