This dissertation seeks to address the unmet mental health needs of adolescents by exploring alternative mental health service models, specifically examining the effectiveness of mentoring for improving mental health using the dual-factor model as an explanatory framework.
The author of this dissertation explores one solution to the unmet mental health needs of adolescents, which involves expanding the range of personnel who can deliver mental health services while reconceptualizing mental health service delivery through alternative frameworks such as the dual-factor model (DFM), which assesses symptoms of psychopathology and subjective well-being. The author discusses a research study that examined the effectiveness of mentoring on the improvement of mental health, using the DFM of mental health as an explanatory framework. The author performed the study at a local, low-income middle school during the spring and fall of 2017, and spring 2018 semesters. The author recruited 112 students to participate in the study. Of those, 66 were mentored over an eight- to 12-week period with a manualized Academic Mentoring Program for Educational Development (AMPED) mentoring program. Results showed that when using unidimensional analysis, the mentored students did not significantly improve their subjective well-being or alleviate symptoms of psychopathology compared to the control group; when using a DFM classification, tests for higher rates of positive outcomes were non-significant. The author found that students in the mentoring group were more likely to make small changes relative to the control group. The changes in the experimental group pre- and post-mentoring were small relative to the control group, however the author notes that the study was small and recommends that further investigation be made into the efficacy and feasibility of using DFM framework for school-based mental health interventions.