Background: The suicide prevention program Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM) has been developed and used as a universal school mental health program aimed at 14–16-year-olds. The purpose of YAM is to increase adolescents’ knowledge about mental health and develop skills to face life's difficulties. The program aims to promote the development of young peoples’ problem-solving skills and emotional intelligence.The purpose of the study was to evaluate a YAM intervention in a municipality in a rural area in the northern Sweden from the school -staffs’ and YAM instructors’ perspective.Methods: Interviews were made before and after the intervention with a total of 43 staff from three schools, the student health service, and the municipality. A thematic content analysis was conducted.Findings: The results show limited changes of using YAM on young peoples’ problem-solving skills. The developed themes were related to aspects on the rural context, the society, inability of the pupils to meet demands, school-staff mistrusting mental illness trends, role conflicts and unsecure responsibilities among the school-staff.Conclusion: For a rural area with small school units, YAM needs to be adapted to the local context and involve the schools to make them stakeholders, not just recipients of a top-down distributed intervention. It is also important to use YAM as part of a whole school approach in the work with school mental health. The work thus becomes more in line with a health-promoting approach.