Effects of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy Skills Delivered by Trained Peer Mentors and Standard School Counselling on Emotional Dysregulation Among Senior Secondary School Students in Nasarawa State, Nigeria
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67378/vvj6b173Keywords:
dialectical behaviour therapy; peer mentors; emotional dysregulation; task-shifting; school counselling; adolescent mental health; secondary schools; Nasarawa State; Nigeria; quasi-experimental design.Abstract
This study examined the effects of Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) skills delivered by trained peer mentors and standard school counselling on emotional dysregulation among senior secondary school students in Nasarawa State, Nigeria. Emotional dysregulation is a transdiagnostic mechanism underlying the most prevalent adolescent mental health presentations in secondary school settings, yet evidence-based task-shifting models for its treatment in low- and middle-income country school contexts remain critically underexplored. A quasi-experimental pre-test post-test control group design was employed. A purposive sample of 48 Senior Secondary School Two (SS2) students (24 males, 24 females) meeting clinical screening thresholds for emotional dysregulation was drawn from three public secondary schools across the Karu, Keffi, and Lafia Local Government Areas of Nasarawa State. Participants were assigned to peer mentor-delivered DBT skills (n = 16), standard school counselling (n = 16), or a waitlist control condition (n = 16), with one condition per school. Both active interventions were delivered over 12 weeks in structured weekly group sessions. The Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS) served as the validated primary outcome measure. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA), with pre-test DERS scores as the covariate, was employed to test the null hypotheses at the 0.05 significance level. Both peer mentor-delivered DBT skills and standard school counselling produced statistically significant reductions in emotional dysregulation relative to the waitlist control. Peer mentor-delivered DBT skills demonstrated significantly greater efficacy than standard school counselling, with a large effect size (η²p = .69). These findings provide evidence for the feasibility and effectiveness of task-shifting DBT skills delivery to trained peer mentors in Nigerian secondary schools, with significant implications for scalable adolescent mental health service models in low-resource settings.
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