The Effects of a School-Based Psychosocial Intervention on Resilience and Health Outcomes Among Vulnerable Children

Abstract

Responding to the psychosocial health needs of the vulnerable population has been considered as a significant public health issue that must be addressed through access to public health professionals. The study adopted a quasi-experimental design to evaluate the impact of a training program on nurses and teachers' knowledge of psychosocial health needs of vulnerable children and the impact this had on children's resilience and psychosocial health outcomes (self-esteem, social connection, anxiety, and depression). The result showed a significant increase in the knowledge mean scores of both nurses and teachers 6 weeks post intervention. Children's depression scores significantly reduced post intervention. Their resilience, self-esteem, and social connection were also significantly improved, while no significant reduction was found in their anxiety scores. The results of the pilot study suggest that a more rigorous study be conducted to further ascertain the effectiveness of the various interventions used in this study while taking into consideration the challenges raised by the authors.

Resilience in the General Population: Standardization of the Resilience Scale (RS-11)

“…Empirical findings indicate that self-esteem and resilience are intricately linked, with associations ranging from r =.21 to r =.51 [ 18 – 20 ]. Self-esteem was inconsistently associated with depression/anxiety symptoms, yet higher resilience scores were linked with lower depression/anxiety symptoms [ 21 – 24 ] [ 25 , 26 ]. In some studies, the constructs of self-esteem and resilience are used synonymously [ 16 , 27 , 28 ].…”

A Systematic Scoping Review of the Resilience Intervention Literature for Indigenous Adolescents in CANZUS Nations

“…This intervention reported outcomes, such as increased community/staff knowledge, skills, and confidence, the development of local language and understanding of mental health and well-being, and the development of health-promotion resources in the local Indigenous language (78). Such approaches to building school capacity through providing training to teachers to increase their knowledge about the psychosocial well-being and resilience needs of adolescents is a promising approach that warrants further research attention (109,110). However, evaluation efforts also need to assess the impact of such approaches on individual students' resilience outcomes as well as the staff-, school-, and community-level outcomes.…”

An Integrative Review of School-Based Mental Health Interventions and Implications for Psychogenic Nonepileptic Seizures

“…The data extraction results (see Table 1) reveal important details about mental health interventions in schools. Of the 15 included studies, 9 were conducted in the United States (Fox, Rossetti, Burns, & Popovich, 2005;Houck & Stember, 2002;Hoying & Melnyk, 2016;Kim et al, 2015;Lamb, Puskar, Sereika, & Corcoran, 1998;Muggeo, Stewart, Drake, & Ginsburg, 2017;Ramirez et al, 2013;Vessey & O'neill, 2011;Wall, 2005), while the remaining studies were conducted in the United Kingdom (Spratt, Philip, Shucksmith (Clausson & Berg, 2008;Johansson & Ehnfors, 2006), Netherlands (Bannink et al, 2014), and Nigeria (Olowokere & Okanlawon, 2014). The Journal of School Nursing published 5 of the 15 articles (Clausson & Berg, 2008;Houck & Stember, 2002;Hoying & Melnyk, 2016;Olowokere & Okanlawon, 2014;Vessey & O'neill, 2011).…”

“…Of the 15 studies, 6 included details about theories or frameworks that guided the study, the majority of which mentioned cognitive behavioral theory or similar mental health therapy as their basis (Clausson & Berg, 2008;Fox et al, 2005;Hoying & Melnyk, 2016;Lamb et al, 1998;Stallard et al, 2008;Wall, 2005). As is acceptable in an integrative review, the included studies varied in design type: randomized control trials (Bannink et al, 2014;Lamb et al, 1998), quasi-experimental (Fox et al, 2005;Houck & Stember, 2002;Hoying & Melnyk, 2016;Kim et al, 2015;Muggeo et al, 2017;Olowokere & Okanlawon, 2014;Ramirez et al, 2013;Stallard et al, 2008), mixed methods (Clausson & Berg, 2008;Vessey & O'neill, 2011), feasibility (Wall, 2005), and qualitative (Johansson & Ehnfors, 2006;Spratt et al, 2010).…”

“…In response to the first research question-"What school nurse interventions have been tested that address mental health concerns of students? "-the following results were obtained: web-based targeted messaging program (Bannink et al, 2014), therapeutic conversation with family (Clausson & Berg, 2008), support group meetings (Houck & Stember, 2002;Vessey & O'neill, 2011), mental health courses embedded in general school curriculum (Hoying & Melnyk, 2016), mental health engagement conversations during health office visits (Kim et al, 2015;Ramirez et al, 2013), coping skills training (Lamb et al, 1998), CBT sessions (Fox et al, 2005;Houck & Stember, 2002;Muggeo et al, 2017;Stallard et al, 2008), resilience training (Olowokere & Okanlawon, 2014;Vessey & O'neill, 2011), and tai chi and mindfulness training (Wall, 2005). Although the interventions were similar in their attempt to offer psychoeducation and skills for coping with mental health concerns, they varied in their target audience type and size.…”