Systematic Review of School-Based Mental Health Intervention among Primary School Children

Mental health disorders among children are increasing in trend. Evidence had suggested a better outcome if any school intervention introduced at primary school before entering the secondary level due to the peer influence. Many focused interventions on mental health targeting the school children are conducted in high income countries. Scares publication related to child mental health intervention from developing countries. This study aimed to systematically review and identify universal mental health program done in addressing the common types of mental health disorders among primary school children looking at the effectiveness of the school-based mental health intervention implemented. PubMed, Scopus, Google scholar and grey literature from these database were search using specific keywords search. Abstracts and full articles were reviewed and graded for quality in pairs using criteria determined in consensus. Any dispute was resolved through third reviewer. A total of 109,242 were found in first hit, and nine studies were included following careful selection process. Three were randomized controlled trials; two used bifactorial design, one prospective intervention cohort, one experimental design with waitlist control, one quasiexperimental pre-post and one non-equivalent group comparison with pre and post-test. Eight of 9 studies showed effectiveness in the outcome. The studies had low to moderate quality. An intervention design that adapted to the population socio cultural showed better acceptance and effective in preventing childhood mental health problems at primary school level.