Risk factors for mental heath in children and young people: knowledge of education agents

Objective: To assess the level of knowledge of education agents about risk factors for mental health in children and adolescents, and to analyze these factors connection with sociodemographic variables. Methods: This was a quantitative study that used non-probabilistic sample of 136 education agents (62.5% professors, 32.4% nurses and 5.1% police officers). Most of participants were women (70.6%) with mean age of 48.34 years old. Data collection was performed through a self-completion questionnaire during 2018 academic year in four schools of the municipality of Viseu, Central Portugal. Statistical tests used were chisquare and multiple regression analysis. Results: In general, education agents showed to have knowledge about risk factors for mental health, highlighting that 39.71% of them had excellent knowledge. In comparative terms, nurses showed better level of knowledge ((x) over bar =15.546), followed by professors ((x) over bar =13.318) and, police officers ((x) over bar =8.571). Differences between participants were significant (x(2)=14.725; p= 0.004). The multivariate study demonstrated that gender was the only variable to prove to be a predictor of the level of knowledge, explaining the 11.5% of variability (p=0.002), and showing that women had a greater level of knowledge. The predictive effect of the variable professional category(p=0.051) and years of professional experience (p=0.0179) was not significant. Conclusion: The fact that gender was the only variable that proved to be predictive of the level of knowledge led us consider the need of adopting differentiated strategies for training programs, in which the characteristics and vulnerability of both sexes should be protected.