Trial reportJournal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines2026
Improving child mental health and learning outcomes and reducing stigma and discrimination in conflict setting: findings from a cluster randomized controlled trial of a classroom-based psychosocial intervention in rural primary schools in Afghanistan.
Trial report in Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
13 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundConflict and crises have long-lasting and dramatic consequences on the mental health of children. We aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a psychosocial intervention on child mental health in Afghanistan.
methodsA two-arm cluster-randomized controlled trial was conducted in 83 rural primary schools within three provinces of Afghanistan. Children in Grades 3-6, their teachers, and one adult family member were enrolled. Schools were randomly assigned (1:1) to one of two groups: a treatment group composed of entire classes receiving a week-long classroom-based teacher-and-child psychosocial training, a one-day family engagement component, and a community-based system dynamics workshop; and a control group. Primary outcomes were anxiety, depression, life skills, self-efficacy, and resilience of the child. Secondary outcomes included reading and mathematical literacy, mathematical problem-solving, and school-based discrimination and stigma. This trial is registered with the International Standard Randomized Controlled Trials Number registry (ISRCTN83632872).
resultsIn June 2021, 40 schools and n = 2,262 children were randomly assigned to the intervention group and 43 schools and n = 2,277 children to the control group. Preintervention survey started October 2, 2021 (first batch) and April 10
conclusionsClassroom-based interventions delivered by trained field-based educational staff can effectively promote child mental health, social-emotional skills, and academic outcomes, and reduce stigma and discrimination among subgroups of children in conflict and crisis settings and have viable potential for scalability.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.