ANZCTR - Registration

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Trial registered on ANZCTR

Registration number

ACTRN12619000821190

Ethics application status

Approved

Date submitted

3/05/2019

Date registered

6/06/2019

Date last updated

8/03/2022

Date data sharing statement initially provided

6/06/2019

Date results provided

27/07/2020

Type of registration

Prospectively registered

Titles & IDs

Public title

The Building Educators' skills in Adolescent Mental health (BEAM) program: Evaluating a mental health training program for secondary school Year Advisors

Scientific title

The BEAM program: Evaluating the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effectiveness of a mental health training program for secondary school Year Advisors

Secondary ID [1]

None

Universal Trial Number (UTN)

U1111-1232-7680

Trial acronym

Linked study record

Health condition

Health condition(s) or problem(s) studied:

Depression

Anxiety

Condition category

Condition code

Mental Health

Anxiety

Public Health

Health promotion/education

Mental Health

Depression

Intervention/exposure

Study type

Interventional

Description of intervention(s) / exposure

The intervention being tested in this study is the BEAM online training program. It was designed in collaboration with high school Year Advisors. The aim of the program is to provide Year Advisors with the knowledge and skills they need to better support students’ mental health. The program is based on a theory of change which proposes that an improvement in knowledge leads to an improvement in attitudes and confidence towards performing helping behaviours. BEAM is the first program we are aware of to apply this model to the unique training needs of Year Advisors, with the goal of improving their mental health knowledge, attitudes, confidence, and helping behaviours towards students. It is also anticipated that through an increase in knowledge and confidence, users will report a reduction in their own psychological distress. The online program utilises a blended style of delivery with users completing 5 online learning topics containing information, case studies, and quizzes. An additional 5 activities delivered through peer-learning requires users to meet with their school colleagues and discuss focus questions. As such, a minimum of two Year Advisors from each school will be recruited in order for users to have at least one colleague at their same professional level to complete these tasks with. The program was developed as an online computer based training to maintain fidelity across users. Program adherence will be measured as time taken to complete learning modules and activities. This is recorded by the online platform hosting the program. Year Advisors will have access to the program for a period of 6 weeks. There is no restriction on the pace at which users complete the learning modules during this time. In total, it is estimated that the training program would take approximately 6.5 hours to complete, however users are encouraged to work through the program in weekly sittings to provide time to complete their peer activities and consolidate their learning. It is anticipated that the online learning content for each topic should take approximately 1 hour to complete with an additional 15-20 minutes allocated for peer-learning.

Intervention code [1]

Other interventions

Comparator / control treatment

Uncontrolled trial

Control group

Uncontrolled

Outcomes

Primary outcome [1]

Mental heath knowledge: This will be measured by a change in total scores on an adapted version of the Mental Health Knowledge Scale (MAKS; Evans-Lacko et al., 2010), and Recognition of Mental Illness vignettes (Jorm & Wright, 2008).

Timepoint [1]

Timepoint 1: Baseline pre-training (day 1)
Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43)
Timepoint 3: 3 month follow-up (day 141)

Primary outcome [2]

Attitudes: This will be measured by a change in total scores on an adapted version of the Stigmatising Attitudes Scale (Griffiths, K. M., Christensen, H., Jorm, A. F., Evans, K., & Groves, C. , 2004).

Timepoint [2]

Timepoint 1: Baseline pre-training (day 1)
Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43)
Timepoint 3: 3 month follow-up (day 141)

Primary outcome [3]

Confidence: This will be measured by a change in total scores on an adapted version of the Confidence questionnaire (Sebbens, Hassmen, Crisp, and Wensley, 2016).

Timepoint [3]

Timepoint 1: Baseline pre-training (day 1)
Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43)
Timepoint 3: 3 month follow-up (day 141)

Secondary outcome [1]

Helping Behaviours: This will be measured by a change in total scores on an adapted version of the Helping Behaviour questionnaire (Jorm et al., 2010).

Timepoint [1]

Timepoint 1: Baseline pre-training (day 1)
Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43)
Timepoint 3: 3 month follow-up (day 141)

Secondary outcome [2]

Program Acceptability: Measured through a 13-item questionnaire developed for this study

Timepoint [2]

Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43)

Secondary outcome [3]

Program Adherence: Measured through a 12-item questionnaire developed for this study, and analytic data on program usage start and complete times.

Timepoint [3]

Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43)

Secondary outcome [4]

Program Implementation: Measured through a 15-item questionnaire adapted from the ORIC (Shea, C. M., Jacobs, S. R., Esserman, D. A., Bruce, K., & Weiner, B. J. 2014) and the NoMad (Finch, T.L., Girling, M., May, C.R., Mair, F.S., Murray, E., Treweek, S., Steen, I.N., McColl, E.M., Dickinson, C., Rapley, T., 2015).

Timepoint [4]

Timepoint 2: Post-training (day 43)

Secondary outcome [5]

Program Satisfaction: Measured through a 10-item questionnaire developed for this study.

Timepoint [5]

Timepoint 3: 3 month follow-up (day 141)

Eligibility

Key inclusion criteria

Participants in this study will be secondary school teachers who:

1) Are currently employed full-time in the role of Year Advisor (or equivalent) for students at any secondary school in NSW. In recognition that the title of Year Advisor is not uniformly used across schools, the title can be interchangeable with other terms such as Student Co-ordinator or Head of Year. Participants must be teachers in school leadership positions who are responsible for overseeing a cohort of students, anywhere between Grade 7 and 12.
2) Are available and employed at their school for the duration of the study (approximately 8 weeks).
3) Are able to obtain the signed consent of their school principal.
4) Are from a school with at least one other Year Advisor participating.

Minimum age

18 Years

Maximum age

No limit

Sex

Both males and females

Can healthy volunteers participate?

Yes

Key exclusion criteria

Nil

Study design

Purpose of the study

Educational / counselling / training

Allocation to intervention

Non-randomised trial

Procedure for enrolling a subject and allocating the treatment (allocation concealment procedures)

Allocation is not concealed. Non-randomised trial.

Methods used to generate the sequence in which subjects will be randomised (sequence generation)

Not applicable. Non-randomised trial.

Masking / blinding

Open (masking not used)

Who is / are masked / blinded?

Intervention assignment

Single group

Other design features

This study will be an uncontrolled pre/post trial of the BEAM training program in a group of secondary school Year Advisors. Data will be collected at three time points: baseline, 6-weeks, and 3-month follow-up.

Phase

Not Applicable

Type of endpoint/s

Efficacy

Statistical methods / analysis

Self-report data will be collected using the Black Dog Institute e-health platform and then analysed using SPSS statistical software v. 22.0 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Il, USA). Outcome measures will be analysed using repeated-measures analyses to determine a difference between scores at time 1 (baseline) and scores at time 2 (post-test) as well as whether effects are sustained at 3-months follow up. Open response answers will be analysed qualitatively using thematic analysis.

Sample size calculations are based on detecting a medium effect size of 0.5, power at 0.8, and alpha of .05. This produces a sample size of 64 participants. As we wish to have a minimum of two Year Advisors per school participate, a total of 32 participating schools is the target.

Recruitment

Recruitment status

Completed

Date of first participant enrolment

Anticipated

17/06/2019

Actual

22/07/2019

Date of last participant enrolment

Anticipated

22/07/2019

Actual

4/08/2019

Date of last data collection

Anticipated

22/12/2019

Actual

16/12/2019

Sample size

Target

Accrual to date

Final

Recruitment in Australia

Recruitment state(s)

NSW

Funding & Sponsors

Funding source category [1]

Other

Name [1]

Black Dog Institute

Address [1]

Hospital Road
Prince of Wales Hospital
Randwick, NSW, 2031

Country [1]

Australia

Primary sponsor type

Other

Name

Black Dog Institute

Address

Hospital Road
Prince of Wales Hospital
Randwick, NSW, 2031

Country

Australia

Secondary sponsor category [1]

None

Name [1]

Address [1]

Country [1]

Ethics approval

Ethics application status

Approved

Ethics committee name [1]

University of New South Wales Human Research Ethics Committee

Ethics committee address [1]

UNSW Research Ethics & Compliance Support
The University of New South Wales
Sydney 
NSW 2052

Ethics committee country [1]

Australia

Date submitted for ethics approval [1]

01/02/2019

Approval date [1]

08/04/2019

Ethics approval number [1]

HC190047

Summary

Brief summary

While schools are increasingly expected to support the mental health of students, classroom teachers have reported feeling that they lack the skills and confidence in knowing how to best recognise and respond to students’ mental health issues. The role of Year Advisor has additional requirements to support students’ mental health, namely by existing as the main point of contact for parents, students, other school staff, and health professionals when managing student mental illness. Our research team also conducted a systematic review which found that few teacher training programs in adolescent mental had been formally evaluated for effectiveness. In addition, there was no evidence that existing training programs increased the rate of teachers’ helping behaviour towards students.

Based on these findings, our research team was awarded the funds to develop an evidence-based mental health training program specifically for secondary school Year Advisors. An advisory group of Year Advisors was established to help develop the program including content selection and delivery mode. A review of the features of existing programs indicated that teacher training programs tend to use a didactic workshop style of delivery. While this format achieved short-term improvements in teachers’ knowledge and attitudes towards student mental health, it is unclear whether these improvements were long-term. Research in professional development and adult learning suggest that training programs which feature elements of online, collaborative, and skill-based learning are preferred by users and can lead to behaviour change. Collaboration with the Year Advisor advisory group indicated that ideally, training programs should focus on practical skills and collaborative learning with peers. Taken together, this indicated a need for an evidence-based, innovative skills-based training program aimed at improving Year Advisors’ knowledge, attitudes, confidence, and helping behaviours in responding to students’ mental health needs. We are now ready to test the training program for acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effectiveness.

Trial website

Trial related presentations / publications

Public notes

Contacts

Principal investigator

Name

Dr Bridianne O'Dea

Address

Black Dog Institute
Hospital Road
Prince of Wales Hospital
Randwick, NSW, 2031

Country

Australia

Phone

+61 2 93828509

Fax

b.odea@blackdog.org.au

Contact person for public queries

Name

Bridianne O'Dea

Address

Black Dog Institute
Hospital Road
Prince of Wales Hospital
Randwick, NSW, 2031

Country

Australia

Phone

+61 2 93828509

Fax

b.odea@blackdog.org.au

Contact person for scientific queries

Name

Bridianne O'Dea

Address

Black Dog Institute
Hospital Road
Prince of Wales Hospital
Randwick, NSW, 2031

Country

Australia

Phone

+61 2 93828509

Fax

b.odea@blackdog.org.au

Data sharing statement

Will individual participant data (IPD) for this trial be available (including data dictionaries)?

No/undecided IPD sharing reason/comment

This will not be available as per the conditions of our ethical approval.

What supporting documents are/will be available?

Doc. No.	Type	Citation	Link	Email	Other Details	Attachment
1991	Ethical approval					377529-(Uploaded-03-05-2019-17-53-59)-Study-related document.Pdf

Results publications and other study-related documents

Documents added manually

No documents have been uploaded by study researchers.

Documents added automatically

Source	Title	Year of Publication	DOI
Embase	Examining the Preliminary Effectiveness and Acceptability of a Web-Based Training Program for Australian Secondary School Teachers: Pilot Study of the BEAM (Building Educators Skills in Adolescent Mental Health) Program.	2021	https://dx.doi.org/10.2196/29989

N.B. These documents automatically identified may not have been verified by the study sponsor.

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