The Health4Life initiative, a school-based multiple health behavior change (MHBC) intervention, targeted six lifestyle risk factors—diet, sleep, physical activity, screen time, alcohol use, and smoking—among Australian grade seven students (6,639 participants). The intervention showed no significant effects on depressive, anxiety, or psychological distress symptoms at 12- or 24-month follow ups compared to an active control. However, short-term benefits for depressive and psychological distress symptoms were observed immediately after the intervention. These results align with previous findings that school-based mental health prevention interventions often show transient effects.

The scalable online format, alignment with health education curriculums, and positive reception from students and teachers highlight the Health4Life initiative’s potential for broad implementation. Future research should focus on refining the intervention to better target anxiety symptoms, sustain benefits for depressive and psychological distress symptoms, and optimize the delivery of app-based content. By improving coping skills, social connections, and self-efficacy, MHBC interventions like Health4Life could become an essential tool in universal mental health prevention among adolescents.

Reference: Smout, S., Champion, K.E., O’Dean, S. et al. Anxiety, depression and distress outcomes from the Health4Life intervention for adolescent mental health: a cluster-randomized controlled trial. Nat. 2024;818–827. doi: 10.1038/s44220-024-00246-w.