TY - JOUR
PY - 2022//
TI - Impact of a school mental health program on children's and adolescents' socio-emotional skills and psychosocial difficulties
JO - Children (Basel, Switzerland)
A1 - Colomeischi, Aurora Adina
A1 - Duca, Diana Sinziana
A1 - Bujor, Liliana
A1 - Rusu, Petruta Paraschiva
A1 - Grazzani, Ilaria
A1 - Cavioni, Valeria
SP - e1661
EP - e1661
VL - 9
IS - 11
N2 - 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 children, 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. Language: en
LA - en
SN - 2227-9067
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children9111661
ID - ref1
ER -