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I am thrilled to share that our new research paper "Mental health knowledge, stigma towards mental illness, and help-seeking among adolescents in secondary schools in Kampala, Uganda" has just been published in Cambridge Prisms: Global Mental Health. 🎉 We surveyed 889 secondary school students in Kampala to understand what young people know about mental health, how they feel about people with mental illness, and where they would turn for help. Here is what we found: * Knowledge gaps exist, adolescents recognised depression and anxiety, substance use well, but only 35.7% identified schizophrenia as a mental illness Over half (52%) said "don't know." if it is a mental illness. Psychotic disorder including Bipolar (manic depression) had the highest dont know rate. * Stigma is present across various domains, around 50.6% of students expressed reluctance to live with someone with a mental illness in the future. * Help-seeking is promising but complicated young people are open to mental health professionals, yet 63.4% said they would NOT approach a teacher( including senior woman senior man), who is often the most accessible adult in their lives particularly for those in boarding school. * Knowledge matters the more students knew about mental health, the less likely they were to stigmatise or socially distance from people with mental illness. These findings are the starting point for better, more targeted mental health programmes in Ugandan schools and across low- and middle-income countries. This paper is part of a larger study The Wellness Project, a school-based mental health literacy intervention by Wellness Psychological Services Uganda, Read the full paper here: https://lnkd.in/dKae68Wc I am grateful to my co-authors Georg Schomerus (University of Leipzig) and Rosco Kasujja (Makerere University), and to the students who took part and for study support team Kaduli Patrick Brendah N Brenda Nalugo Martha Amelia Apendi #MentalHealth #YouthMentalHealth #Uganda #MentalHealthLiteracy #GlobalMentalHealth #PublicHealth #Research #Stigma #Africa