Mental Health Promotion among Nursing Students

Problem statement: In the literature, there is no consensus over what constitutes an appropriate model for mental health promotion among nursing students in Thailand. Approach: This quasi-experimental research was conducted to evaluate the effects of mental health promotion intervention. Several activities in this intervention were created for promoting sense of coherence which focused on the manipulation of both internal and external factors that effect mental health. Results: The results revealed that prior to the implementation of mental health promotion intervention, both experimental and control groups demonstrated that there were no significant differences on the mean score of all styles of defense mechanisms and sense of coherence either in total or individual dimensions. After intervention were implemented, however, there were significantly differences between groups using mature defense mechanisms (t = -3.486, p<0.01). The comparison between before and after intervention demonstrated that using mature mechanisms was significantly different (t = -2.796, p<0.01). Following implementation, comparison between groups revealed that the sense of coherence scores both in total (t = -4.290, p<0.01) and individual dimensions were significantly different in regards to manageability (t = -3.748, p<0.01), comprehensibility (t = -4.426, p<0.01) and meaningfulness (t = -2.750, p<0.01). Comparison prior to and after implementation for the experimental group demonstrated that both scores in total (t = -6.376, p<0.01) and individual dimensions were significantly different for manageability (t = -6.031, p<0.01), comprehensibility (t = -5.696, p<0.01) and meaningfulness (t = -3.484, p<0.01) whereas for the control group was significantly different only in total (t = -2.681, p<0.01) and comprehensibility dimension (t = -2.167, p<0.05). Conclusion: These findings reflect the effectiveness of mental health promotion intervention. In order to prepare student nurses most effectively, nursing schools should apply this appropriate interventions with their students.