Adolescence is a time dominated by change, development and opportunity for young people. Yet for many adolescents, this time is often accompanied by feelings of stress, anxiety and even depression.
Equipping adolescents with ways to understand and manage their feelings and experiences can help them to enjoy and benefit from their school years, and what follows.  

WP1 explores how we can harness the potential of schools to help adolescents understand and navigate changes in how they are thinking and feeling, especially given the academic pressures on them. There are limited whole-school approaches in India to support adolescent emotional well-being. Interventions are most effective when they are co-produced with end users, stakeholders, and when they are attentive to implementation challenges from the outset. Project SAMA will co-produce its WP1 intervention building on active ingredients identified in successful emotion well-being interventions and working to create a locally acceptable intervention via workshops with adolescents, parents, teachers, and well-being professionals. We will draw upon implementation science to build on what works when implementing such interventions in complex school setting.  

After our co-production phase, the WP1 intervention will then be universally delivered to Grade 9 pupils in recruited schools (across the Bengaluru District) by project-appointed lay counsellors. Our lay counsellors will be trained to deliver, monitor, and support the delivery of SAMA interventions within our recruited schools.  

We will examine whether the intervention is acceptable to young people and schools, whether it is feasible to deliver and to research, processes of change and which outcomes measures are most sensitive for use in a future effectiveness trial. Our primary outcome for this intervention will be adolescent symptoms of anxiety and depression.