Impact of a School Mental Health Program on Children's and Adolescents' Socio-Emotional Skills and Psychosocial Difficulties

Neighborhood-Level Social Determinants of Health and Adolescent Mental Health

OBJECTIVE

Mental health diagnoses among adolescents are increasing in prevalence. Existing literature considers associations between individual-level social determinants of health (SDOH) and adolescent mental health. Neighborhood-level SDOH can have a substantial impact on health. This paper examines associations between neighborhood-level SDOH and mental health diagnoses of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation among hospitalized adolescents.

METHODS

We used 2018 and 2019 Texas Inpatient Discharge Public Use Data Files linked to the zip-code level Child Opportunity Index 2.0, a composite measure of subdomains which characterize neighborhood-level SDOH, to examine rates of mental health diagnoses and associations with patient characteristics across opportunity level quintiles.

RESULTS

The sample included 50,011 adolescents ages 10-19 admitted to the hospital with the mental health diagnoses anxiety, depression, and/or suicide. Most had a single diagnosis; anxiety (12.9%), depression (37.5%), or suicide (13.0%). Hospitalized adolescents 10-14 years old were a plurality (44.2%) of the sample. Most adolescents were White (64.2%) and non-Hispanic (67.4%) and lived in rural areas (29.6%). Adolescents from racial minority populations and those in rural communities with mental health diagnoses had lower opportunity-levels. Higher opportunity levels were associated with greater odds of having an anxiety or suicide diagnosis while a depression diagnosis was associated with a lower opportunity-level.

CONCLUSIONS

There are significant differences in adolescent mental health diagnoses associated with neighborhood opportunity-level. While all adolescents can benefit from mental health education, screening, and early interventions, additional resources tailored to neighborhood-level opportunity may prove a more meaningful way to improve population-level mental health outcomes.

Assessing metarepresentational abilities in adolescence: an exploratory study on relationships between definitional competence and theory of mind

Introduction

Several developmental changes occur in adolescence, particularly in the metarepresentational domain, which allows and promotes adaptive sociality. We explored the possible relationships between theory of mind (ToM) and definitional competence, both metarepresentational, beyond age and gender effects.

Methods

To reach our goals, we involved 75 adolescents (age range 14-19 years, M = 15.7, and SD = 1.36). ToM was measured through "The Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test" (RMET), and definitional competence was assessed through a new instrument, namely, the "Co.De. Scale". Attention was paid to check whether results were different when considering mental states vs. non-mental states of the scale and emotional words vs. non-emotional words.

Results

T-tests showed that older adolescents (third grade of high school) performed better than younger ones (first grade of high school) in both tasks. Only in the male group, there were no school grade differences in the ToM task. Regression analyses showed that RMET performance predicted the score of non-emotional mental states definitions and, even if marginally, of ToM word definitions. However, RMET was not a predictor of the general performance of the definitional task or emotion definitions.

Discussion

Connections with global adolescents' development and possible educational implications are discussed.

Promoting teachers' wellbeing through a serious game intervention: a qualitative exploration of teachers' experiences

Introduction

Teachers' wellbeing plays a critical role in their overall job satisfaction, motivation, and effectiveness in building supporting learning environments. In today's dynamic educational settings, where teachers often face numerous challenges and stressors, their wellbeing becomes increasingly vital. Consequently, there is an urgent need to innovate and develop targeted training interventions that can support specifically the wellbeing of educators.

Methods

This study sought to provide an overview of the "Online Wellbeing Course - OWC," a serious game developed to enhance teachers' wellbeing, and to investigate the participants' feedback after being engaged in the OWC, utilizing a qualitative approach through focus group discussions. A total of 189 in-service teachers took part in the study. To qualitatively explore their experiences with the OWC, participants were involved in focus groups and asked to provide feedback about how and to what extent the course was beneficial for their wellbeing.

Results

Teachers reported enhancements in areas such as emotional competence, self-care strategies, social awareness, relationship skills, decision-making, and school climate.

Discussion

These outcomes suggested the potential of serious games as an innovative training approach for supporting teachers' wellbeing, offering valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and educators.

Validation of Italian students' self-ratings on the SSIS SEL brief scales

Introduction

Despite increasing interest in measuring social and emotional learning (SEL), there is a lack of European-validated tools for assessing the efficacy of SEL programs. The aim of this study was to validate an Italian version of the social skills improvement system (SSIS) SEL brief scales-student form.

Methods

Participants were 1,175 students (mean age: 11.02 years; SD: 2.42; range: 8-16 years; males: 46.8%) recruited at schools in Northern Italy.

Statistical analyses and results

Initial confirmatory factor analysis encountered a series of challenges, implying non-convergence of the original five-factor measurement model (self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making) based on the Collaborative on Academic Social Emotional Learning (CASEL) competency framework established with students in the United States. Further exploratory and confirmatory analyses supported a four-factor model that remained partially invariant across gender groups. The Italian version of the SSIS SEL brief scales was thus shown to be an efficient measurement tool for estimating social and emotional learning in students.

Discussion

We discuss the implications of findings in relation to selecting valid and reliable instruments for assessing children's and adolescents' SEL competencies, while considering the culturally-situated nature of the constructs under study.

A randomized controlled trial on the digital socio-emotional competence training Zirkus Empathico for preschoolers

In this randomized controlled trial (RCT), the digital socio-emotional competence training Zirkus Empathico was tested in 74 Central European children (5.1 (0.9) years; 34 females) within a longitudinal design (three time points: T1 = pre-training; T2 = immediately following 6-week training, T3 = 3-month follow-up). The pre-registered primary outcome was empathy, secondary outcomes included emotion recognition, prosocial behavior, and behavioral problem reduction; furthermore, children's neural sensitivity to facial expressions quantified with event-related potentials. Compared to controls (N = 38), Zirkus Empathico participants (N = 36) showed increases in empathy (d = 0.28 [-0.17, 0.76]), emotion recognition (d = 0.57 [0.01, 1.06]), prosocial behavior (d = 0.51 [0.05, 0.99]) and reduced behavioral problems (d = 0.54 [0.08, 1.03]). They also showed larger P3 amplitudes to happy vs. angry and neutral facial expressions post-training. Thus, Zirkus Empathico may be a promising digital training for social competence in preschoolers.

Supporting Preschoolers' Mental Health and Academic Learning through the PROMEHS Program: A Training Study

There is compelling evidence that early school intervention programs enhance children's development of life skills, with a positive knock-on effect on their behaviors and academic outcomes. To date, most universal interventions have displayed gains in children's social-emotional competencies with a limited reduction in problem behaviors. This may depend on programs' curricula focused to a greater extent on preschoolers' social-emotional competencies rather than problem behaviors. Promoting Mental Health at Schools (PROMEHS) is a European, school-based, universal mental health program explicitly focused on both promoting students' mental health and preventing negative conduct by adopting a whole-school approach. In this study, we set out to evaluate the effectiveness of the program for Italian and Portuguese preschoolers. We recruited 784 children (age range = 4-5 years), assigning them to either an experimental group (six months' participation in the PROMEHS program under the guidance of their teachers, who had received ad hoc training) or a waiting list group (no intervention). We found that PROMEHS improved preschoolers' social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies, prosocial behavior, and academic outcomes. The more practical activities were carried out at school, the more children's SEL competencies increased, and the more their internalizing and externalizing behaviors decreased. Furthermore, marginalized and disadvantaged children were those who benefited most from the program, displaying both greater improvements in SEL and more marked decreases in internalizing problems compared to the rest of the sample.