Youth are at-risk of developing psychosocial difficulties and there is a clear need for evidence-based psychosocial programs. Hence, the aim of this study is to test the effectiveness of the Psychosocial support program for youth. It consisted of six group workshops and individual sessions as needed, held by psychologists, and covering the topics of mental health, help-seeking, social support, stigma, etc. One-group pretest-posttest design was used with inclusion criteria being between 13-24 years of age and not undertaking any other form of psychosocial/psychiatric treatment. A total of 78 youth (Mage=16.34, SDage=2.01, 16.9% males) who participated in the Program agreed to take part in the study. Each beneficiary participated in 1-13 individual and 3-6 group sessions. Inventories measuring well-being (WHO5), quality of life (MANSA), mental health literacy consisted of knowledge and attitudes towards mental health difficulties (School Mental Health), depression (PHQ9) and anxiety (GAD7) were administered at three time points: before the Program implementation (pre-test), immediately after the implementation (post-test) and one month after (follow-up). The results of paired-samples T-test showed that there is a significant decrease on post-test measures of depression (t(54) = 3.536, p < .01), and increase in positive attitudes (t(53) = -3.625, p < .01) and knowledge (t(54) = -5.794, p < .001). The analysis on follow-up measures revealed significant decreases on measures of depression (t(19) = 4.880, p < .001) and anxiety (t(19) = 6.047, p < .001), with increases on measures of quality of life (t(19)=-2.730, p < .05), attitudes (t(19) = -5.494, p < .001) and knowledge (t(19) = -9.308, p < .001). Although the results support the effectiveness of the Program, they should be interpreted with caution due to high rate of sample attrition, and the absence of a control group resulting from resource constraints.
Dimoski et al. (Mon,) studied this question.