Impact of a School Mental Health Program on Children's and Adolescents' Socio-Emotional Skills and Psychosocial Difficulties
The challenges of today's society demand high levels of socio-emotional skills in children and adolescents; therefore, mental health is an important issue to be addressed and promoted in schools. The present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a school mental health program (Promotin...
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Book |
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MDPI AG,
2022-10-01T00:00:00Z.
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| Summary: | The challenges of today's society demand high levels of socio-emotional skills in children and adolescents; therefore, mental health is an important issue to be addressed and promoted in schools. The present study aims to investigate the effectiveness of a school mental health program (Promoting Mental Health at Schools; PROMEHS) designed to promote socio-emotional learning and prevent psychosocial difficulties in children and adolescents. The study was conducted on a sample of 1392 students (evaluated by 104 teachers) from kindergarten (<i>n</i> = 446), primary school (n = 426), secondary school (<i>n</i> = 354), and high school (<i>n</i> = 166). A quasi-experimental study design with experimental and waitlist control groups was used to evaluate the program's effectiveness. Students were non-randomly assigned to the experimental (<i>n</i> = 895) and control group (<i>n</i> = 497). Students belonging to the experimental group received one-hour lessons once a week for 12 weeks. The teachers evaluated their students' social-emotional skills, strengths, and difficulties before and after the intervention. The results indicated the effectiveness of the PROMEHS program in improving social-emotional skills for all school levels, reducing internalizing problems in primary and secondary school chil-dren, and reducing externalizing issues for kindergarten and primary school children. The PROMEHS program is a promising approach to enhancing childrens' and adolescents' social and emotional skills and to decreasing psychosocial difficulties, such as internalizing and externalizing problems. |
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| Item Description: | 10.3390/children9111661 2227-9067 |