Mental Health in Schools: A Psychoeducational Programme

This psychoeducational programme on mental health in schools, with a focus on primary prevention of common mental disorders, is aimed at promoting students’ positive mental health, their psychological wellbeing, sense of self efficacy and life satisfaction.
It is based on several social skill training programmes and is characterised by placing greater importance on defining personal goals, structured problem-solving methods, as well as on communication, negotiation, and impulse control skills.

Target: upper secondary school students
Products: printed and digital material, and event

The programme is based on a mutual and self-help handbook for youths developed in 2009 by the ISS in conjunction with the Italian Health Ministry’s CDC. The handbook is based on the WHO’s principles of social-emotional life-skills learning and of the so-called emotional intelligence. The handbook includes 17 units with theoretical and practical exercises sections (for two or three students or small groups). Each 60-minute unit takes place in the classroom with the support of facilitators (older students or psychologists). To assess this tool’s acceptability and effectiveness, the programme was implemented in 20 upper secondary schools in Northern, Central and Southern Italy, involving a total of 561 students during the 2009-2010 and 2011-2012 school years. An experimental effectiveness study conducted on more than 300 students (with an average age of 15.2) during the 2011-2012 school year showed that the programme led to improvements in subjective (life satisfaction) and psychological wellbeing, in particular in the psychological sphere of Autonomy, Environmental Control and Self-Acceptance. The Handbook’s contents mostly concern the capacity to solve problems, set realistic goals, assertive communication, developing self-discipline, and improving negotiation, cooperation, and impulse-control skills.

The Handbook was later published in the series Dispense per la scuola (School Handouts) published by the ISS in 2015 and is available online (Dispense per la scuola 16/1).
561 students, aged 13-18, have already participated in the programme and ISS researcher are available to give presentations on this initiative in schools.

Organization of Reference: Centre of Reference for Behavioural Sciences and Mental Health 
Contact Person: Antonella Gigantesco