Mentoring Youth: A Service-Learning Course Within a College of Nursing

Abstract

Faculty at the University of Southern Maine College of Nursing and Health Care Professions developed a servicelearning course that connected students and faculty with at-risk children in a local community. Nursing students, with faculty supervision and support, developed, implemented, and evaluated interventions to reduce risk factors and increase protective factors to build and strengthen the participants' resiliency. Students enrolled in the service-learning course worked in the community where they gained an understanding of what it was like for children and adolescents to live in an impoverished community setting with disorganized family units and weak community support. The students learned to collaborate with police, schools, public health nurses, and churches, as well as students in other major programs. The benefits of this course for students and the community were far reaching and even life changing.

Understanding the Role of Prosocial Behavior in Youth Mental Health: Findings from a Scoping Review

“…Our findings also report diverse interventions with mixed outcomes on helping others and youth mental health. Educational, psychosocial, mindfulness and act of kindness interventions had an overwhelmingly positive impact on youths: for example, life satisfaction [33,114,197], experience of positive emotions [200] and improved learning [110,199]. However, there were a few interventionssuch as school-based programs for resilience, and trauma-focused intervention-that showed no change, or even showed a reduction in prosocial behavior [204].…”

“…Lastly, engaging in prosocial behavior resulted in several positive impacts. The identified studies suggested that youths who engaged in prosocial behavior benefited from increased use of reappraisal [97], coping mechanisms [98], depression-prevention strategies [97][98][99], positive reappraisal [100], higher levels of intentional self-regulation [101], higher levels of strengths and lower levels of distress [102], higher levels of trust [103], passions, relational opportunities, sense of empowerment [104], increased awareness [105], happiness [21,60], positive self-identity [81,106], improved wellbeing [107,108], better morale [109] and positive and safe experiences [110,111]. Some other prosocial strategies involved youths encouraging self-help, and respecting the right of their peers not to seek help [112].…”

“…In terms of the effect of personal beliefs on behavior, self-efficacy was a theme in a study that tested life skills intervention [202]. Prosocial interventions also played a role in improving the learning of young people, such as their learning about communities, poverty, diversity, teamwork, at-risk populations and their own biases and upbringing [110]. The group psychosocial intervention for children (aged 12-18) of a parent with mental illness showed a statistically significant increase in mental health literacy [197].…”

Critical Commitments to Partnership in Global Service-Learning

“…One example of this is the dearth of research that exists on the impact of GSL programs on host communities (Beaman et al, 2018). In contrast, a significant body of research exists on the benefits of GSL to U.S. college students, including deepening "individuals' cultural understanding and encourag[ing] cultural humility" (Early & Lasker, 2017) and gaining leadership development skills (Childs et al, 2003). Institutions of higher education and program directors may have structured partnerships in a way that is cooperative rather than reciprocal (Worrall, 2007).…”