Stigma reduction campaigns in this locale should target internalized stigma and its associated socio-cultural nuances.

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Training institutions carry the responsibility for developing supportive interventions to promote students' throughput, and ensure the graduation of competent and ethically sound clinicians.

Meeting the mental health needs of black children will take more than just increasing access to mental health services and early identification. It also will require a critical evaluation of the practices and models being used to diagnose and treat mental health concerns. Frameworks have been established that use a positive, strengths-based, culturally appropriate approach in working with black children and adolescents. These models recognize that while black youth go through the same developmental processes as nonblack youth (e.g., puberty, identity, and maturation), culture and context play a unique role in their lives. School-based mental health clinics, wellness centers, and using peers as first responders are all proven solutions to help improve the mental health of not only black students but all students.

Positive psychology interventions hold great promise as schools around the world look to increase the wellbeing of young people. To reach this aim, a program was developed to generate positive emotions, as well as improve life satisfaction, mental toughness and perceptions of school kindness in 538 expatriate students in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Starting in September 2019, the program included a range of positive psychology interventions such as gratitude, acts of kindness and mental contrasting as examples. Life satisfaction and mental toughness at mid-year were sustained or grew by the end of the year. Positive affect, emotional wellbeing and social wellbeing increased at post-intervention 1, compared to baseline. However, this improvement reverted to baseline levels at post-intervention 2, when data were collected during the COVID-19 pandemic. Only psychological wellbeing, negative affect, perceptions of control, and school kindness were increased at post-intervention 2. During the lockdown, students moved less, but slept and scrolled more. Those who extended their sleep duration reported greater wellbeing. Boosting wellbeing through the use of positive psychology interventions works – even in a pandemic – and extended sleep duration appears to be a driving factor for this observation.

Background: Happiness is well known to have positive consequences not only on one person but also on society as a whole. For this reason, psychologists have become increasingly interested in positive psychology in general and in happiness in particular. This interest has been reflected in studying happiness and measuring it. Thus, questions raised lately about the best methods or producers and tools to accurately measure it. And, because happiness is a culturally influenced construct, the applicability of such tools needs to be verified across cultures. Objectives: The study aimed at assessing the reliability and validity of the Arab Scale of Happiness (ASH). The study was conducted on college students, and the analysis included testing of several statistical analyses such as the correlations between two tools for measuring happiness, namely, the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (OHQ) and Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWKS), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II). Methods: A total of 731 college students from a public university in UAE were recruited for the tests used in the study. The validation process of the ASH included assessing its factor structure using both exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. Convergent validity, discriminant validity, and internal reliability of the scale were assessed and reported in addition to evaluating gender differences. Results: Results indicated that the ASH is unidimensional, with a dominant factor explained more than 50% of the variance. The internal reliability of the ASH was high (α= .93), and all items performed properly in measuring happiness. The scale has a good convergent validity as it is highly and positively correlated with OHQ and SWLS, and good discriminate validity as its highly and negatively correlated with BDI-II. Conclusion: The ASH is a reliable and valid scale for measuring happiness among youth and college students. It is necessary to establish its appropriateness for use across populations or countries in future studies. Furthermore, the scale can be used in cross-cultural applications to assess happiness among different groups of individuals.

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Predictive of improved learning outcomes, better mental health, and prosocial behavior, wellbeing can be explicitly taught via positive psychology interventions (PPIs). A year-long multi-component PPI program was developed with the intent to generate positive emotions, life satisfaction, and increase levels of mental toughness and perceptions of school kindness in 538 middle and high expatriate school students in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The program began in September 2019 and included gratitude, self-compassion, mental contrasting, and acts of kindness as examples. Increases in life satisfaction and mental toughness variables (i.e. interpersonal confidence, emotional control, and life control) at mid-year (December) were sustained or grew by the end of the year (June). Positive affect, hedonic wellbeing and social wellbeing increased at post-intervention 1 but reverted to their pre-intervention levels at post-intervention 2. Further, four variables did not increase significantly at post-intervention 1, yet significantly increased at post-intervention 2 (psychological wellbeing, negative affect, perception of control over challenge, and school kindness). During the lockdown, students engaged in less physical activity, but more sleep, social media use and time playing online games. Students who increased their hours of sleep were more likely to experience greater wellbeing. Our findings show that it is possible to boost wellbeing and maintain it during a pandemic via the use of PPIs, but also that the basics of kindness and sleep go a long way towards promoting the mental wellbeing of youth overall, and in this critical time. The efficacy of PPI programs may be considered as a policy tool to remedy the growing inequalities posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, including those present beforehand globally and in the Middle East region.