Title
Changes in depression and positive mental health among youth in a healthy relationships program
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
6-11-2018
Journal
Canadian Journal of School Psychology
Volume
34
Issue
4
First Page
300
Last Page
316
URL with Digital Object Identifier
https://doi.org/10.1177/0829573518777154
Abstract
Mental health promotion programming in schools and community settings is an important part of a comprehensive mental health strategy. The goal of this study was to identify and explore meaningful classes of youth based on their pre- and post-intervention depression symptoms scores with 722 youth involved in a 15-week healthy relationships and mental health promotion program. We utilized latent class growth analysis to identify depression class trajectories, controlling for group clustering effects. A three-class solution identified high decreasing, moderate stable, and low stable trajectories. Gender, age, and reported experience of bullying victimization predicted trajectory class membership. The low stable class trajectory was associated with the highest positive mental health, followed by the moderate stable and the high decreasing trajectories. These results suggest that youth with the highest depression scores showed significant improvement in symptomatology over the course of the program.
Notes
This is an author-accepted manuscript. Final version published in the Canadian Journal of School Psychology by Sage Publications is available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0829573518777154