ABSTRACT
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 (n = 446), primary school (n = 426), secondary school (n = 354), and high school (n = 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 (n = 895) and control group (n = 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.
ABSTRACT
(1) Background: The high rates of mental disorders in adolescence presented in the literature often exclude internalizing problems. Although there is extensive data on the effectiveness of SEL skills in improving resilience, few studies included evidence in their reports on the relationship between SEL skills and internalizing problems. The present study aims to deepen the understanding of the relationship between SEL, resilience, and internalizing problems, by investigating the mediating effect of resilience between SEL components and internalizing problems. (2) Methods: Adolescents (N = 968 adolescents, aged between 11 and 18 years old; M = 13.30; SD = 1.92) from 30 schools from the NE region of Romania were invited to fill out questionnaires on social and emotional learning, internalizing problems, and resilience. (3) Results: The results show that resilience mediates the link between self-awareness and internalizing problems, between self-management and internalizing problems, between relationship skills and internalizing problems, and between responsible decision-making and internalizing problems. (4) Conclusions: These findings revealed the need for social and emotional learning interventions that include resilience-oriented approaches in order to decrease internalizing problems in adolescents. Moreover, we suggest that more culturally appropriate interventions are required to better investigate the interaction between SEL components, resilience, and internalizing problems.
ABSTRACT
The SSIS SEL Brief Scales (SSIS SELb) are multi-informant (teacher, parent, and student) measures that were developed to efficiently assess the SEL competencies of school-age youth in the United States. Recently, the SSIS SELb was translated into multiple languages for use in a multi-site study across six European countries (Croatia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, and Romania). The purpose of the current study was to examine concurrent and predictive evidence for the SEL Composite scores from the translated versions of the SSIS SELb Scales. Results indicated that SSIS SELb Composite scores demonstrated expected positive concurrent and predictive relationships with scores from the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC) and negative relationships with scores from the problem behavior scales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Although there were a few exceptions, these patterns generally were consistent across informants (parents, teachers, and students) and samples providing initial validity evidence for the Composite score from the translated versions of the SSIS SELb Scales. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.
ABSTRACT
As children and young people today face ever increasing social, emotional and mental health challenges, schools, as one of the primary systems in children's lives, are called to broaden their agenda and help to address these challenges. This paper discusses the evaluation of a school-based, universal mental health promotion programme developed recently for the European context. The programme provides a universal curriculum from early years to high school, aiming to promote social and emotional learning and resilience and prevent social, emotional, and behavioural problems in children and adolescents. A total of 7,789 students (and their teachers and parents) from kindergarten to high school across 6 countries in Europe were recruited from 434 classrooms in 124 schools, making use of cluster sampling. A quasi-experimental longitudinal design was used to evaluate the effectiveness of the programme on students' outcomes by comparing the groups' outcomes within times (pre-test vs. post-test) and between groups (experimental vs. control group). A total of 779 classroom teachers completed pre-and-post scales measuring students' social and emotional learning, mental health and academic achievement. Results indicate that the experimental group had significantly larger increase in social and emotional competence and prosocial behaviour, and a decrease in mental health issues (externalising and internalising problems). No significant impact was found for academic outcomes. The findings are discussed in view of the limitations of the study and areas for further research.
