Promoting emotional resiliency through instruction: The effects of a classroom-based prevention program.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The United States Surgeon General's report on mental health accentuates that school-based prevention and treatment are essential to reduce emotional and behavioral problems in children and adolescents (U.S. Public Health Service, 2000). Unfortunately, schools often fail to define appropriate social, emotional, and behavioral expectations and provide minimal to no effort to teach such expectations. This research served to evaluate the Strong Kids Curriculum; a prevention-based, psychoeducational curriculum intended to explicitly teach prosocial behavior, emotional resiliency, and cognitive skills in upper elementary and middle school students. Two treatment groups (n = 7 per group) received the curriculum while students in control groups did not receive any specialized instruction. Nonparametric statistical analyses indicated significant effects for both treatment groups on the curriculum content test, self-report questionnaire, and the Internalizing Symptoms Scale for Children (ISSC). Research limitations, implications for the curriculum and for future evaluations are discussed.