Teaching and Learning about Mental Illnesses: An Australian Perspective

We observed teaching and learning using the MindMatters teaching resource Understanding Mental Illnesses in three Year 10/11 (age range 14–17 years) classes in South Australia. We held focused discussions with the class teachers and a teacher reference group, and administered a questionnaire to measure changes in the students’ knowledge, social distance attitudes and behavioural intentions. Paired sample t-tests showed statistically significant improvements in students’ scores from pre-teaching to post-teaching. Teachers highlighted pedagogical concerns, such as making a complex issue like mental illness accessible to diverse students at different phases of social, emotional and cognitive development, and designing teaching materials that do not trivialise such profound subject matter. Teachers stressed the imperative for teaching about mental illness, but called attention to 1) the need to reach all students, 2) fitting mental health promotion into the timetable of an already crowded curriculum and 3) identifying frameworks of scope and sequence across the years of the secondary school curricula.