Our Vision
The development and evaluation of an evidence-based, effective, target group-specific, diversity-sensitive and freely available online tool for students (aged 12-15 years) that supports their personal resources, empowers them with regard to their mental health and enhances their mental health literacy. The clear objective is to design and implement a program accessible to, and suitable for, the greatest number of students possible, taking account of individual, social and cultural characteristics, and thereby implicitly raising diversity awareness.
The aim of the project
The aim of the project is to directly enhance mental health and mental health literacy, and more indirectly, to promote diversity-awareness among students. Young people’s affinity to digital technologies provides an opportunity to develop prevention programs in the form of digital tools. These can not only be used independently of time and place, they can also be designed to be adaptive and self-directed. Furthermore, the use of anonymity can help reduce those barriers which work against the seeking of help. This is why the goal of this project is to develop a freely available, evidence-based, effective, target group-specific, online tool for students, one which is compatible with the daily experience of young people, and one which, by enhancing personal resources, empowers young people to promote their own mental health.
Our approach
In a participatory approach (i.e. participatory workshops, photovoice, interviews/focus groups), together with the partner schools, a digital tool will be developed that is well-adapted to the needs of the target group and is suitable for promoting mental health in a playful and relatable way. In addition, development will follow the guideline of the Framework for Diversity-Sensitive Content (FDSC), which serves the diversity-sensitive realization of content and will be developed within the project. This is an innovative endeavor, as there are, to our knowledge, no such guidelines available for universal digital prevention and intervention programs.