Abstract

ROSA, Amorim; LOUREIRO, Luís  and  SEQUEIRA, Carlos. Mental health literacy on alcohol abuse: A study with Portuguese adolescents. Revista Portuguesa de Enfermagem de Saúde Mental [online]. 2018, n.spe6, pp.-38. ISSN 1647-2160.  https://doi.org/10.19131/rpesm.0210.

BACKGROUND: Adolescence is a troubled period around the search for identity, indicating a process of vulnerability to the onset of mental disorders, but also to alcohol abuse. This vulnerability is associated with a strong reluctance and delays in professional help seeking, which, in addition to worsening the problem, could compromise the adolescents’ potential for development. On the other hand, the early use of alcohol implies a greater risk of dependence in adulthood. AIM: Characterize mental health literacy on alcohol abuse in adolescents. METHODS: Exploratory descriptive study. The MentaHLiS-AA was applied to a sample of 255 adolescents (159 girls and 96 boys), aged between 10 and 18 years (M = 14.38, SD = 2.20), attending schools in the 2nd and 3rd cycle and secondary education in Coimbra. The appropriate summary statistics and the absolute and percentage frequencies were calculated. RESULTS: We found that 25.5% of participants did not recognize the problem presented in the vignette. In the other components, literacy levels are modest, with preference for informal sources of help and choice for social support and passive referral strategies to help peers with mental health problems. CONCLUSIONS: There are deficits in literacy on alcohol abuse among adolescents, requiring intervention in this area, especially through the development and implementation of programs to promote mental health literacy in schools.

Keywords : Literacy; Mental health; Adolescents; Alcohol abuse.

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