This study can provide solid evidence for the promotion of school-based intervention in general. This study would develop school-based mental health promotion policy recommendations to improve Chinese rural children’s mental health. School-based psychosocial interventions included 14 group sessions for 14 consecutive weeks.

All school social workers and psychological teachers would receive one week of in-person training following procedures. A standardized and uniform research protocol will be applied in all intervention schools. In each county, one high school, one middle school, and one primary school will be randomly chosen as the intervention group, and the other three similar schools will be chosen as control (waiting list) groups. In each school students in grade 5 or higher will be recruited to ensure that approximately 50 children aged 10 to 18 years will be included. Randomization will be performed by the research member who is not involved in the intervention stage. Each sampled school will be randomly allocated either the intervention groups or a control group. Four rural counties in Shandong (Central China), Henan (Central China), Inner Mongolia (Northern China), and Xinjiang (Western China) will be selected as study settings from which schools will be sampled. This study will conduct a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) in a large sample of Chinese rural children. Third, we will investigate whether individual, family, and school related conditions play a moderator role on the effectiveness of school-based psychosocial interventions.

The second aim is to examine which individual, family and school related factors could explain the effectiveness of school-based psychosocial interventions. The first aim of this study is to test the effectiveness of school-based psychosocial interventions for improving mental health in rural Chinese children with traumatic experiences.

Worth the Risk by K. Bromberg