Beyond mental health awareness: Evaluating a blended mental health literacy program to improve adolescents’ coping with school bullying

The objective of this study was to examine the association between a blended MHL learning program and the development of coping behaviors among adolescents toward bullying at school. A quasi-experimental pretest–posttest control group design was conducted with 40 secondary school students in Bangkok over 10 weeks. The intervention group (n = 20) participated in the MHL program delivered through blended face-to-face and online learning, while the control group (n = 20) received regular classroom instruction. A validated questionnaire was used to evaluate coping behaviors toward bullying at school. Descriptive statistics were used for data analysis. Normalized gain (N-gain) and independent-samples t-testing were used to evaluate the change of coping behaviors. The study revealed that coping behaviors in the treatment group were higher than in the control group, with moderate N-gain in all dimensions of coping behaviors. The results indicated that blended MHL might promote transition of MHL to appropriate and adaptive coping behaviors in the school context. Even so, the results must be interpreted carefully due to the limitations of the quasi-experimental design and the relatively small sample size. However, the results expand upon the literature about MHL as they suggest blended learning as a context for instructional management that can facilitate the transformation of mental health knowledge into appropriate coping behaviors. As expected, this conceptual perspective is useful for design and for mental health performance assessment/evaluation in schools in the future. Moreover, the results can also be applied to various educational contexts.