Supporting Preschoolers' Mental Health and Academic Learning through the PROMEHS Program: A Training Study

There is compelling evidence that early school intervention programs enhance children's development of life skills, with a positive knock-on effect on their behaviors and academic outcomes. To date, most universal interventions have displayed gains in children's social-emotional competencies with a limited reduction in problem behaviors. This may depend on programs' curricula focused to a greater extent on preschoolers' social-emotional competencies rather than problem behaviors. Promoting Mental Health at Schools (PROMEHS) is a European, school-based, universal mental health program explicitly focused on both promoting students' mental health and preventing negative conduct by adopting a whole-school approach. In this study, we set out to evaluate the effectiveness of the program for Italian and Portuguese preschoolers. We recruited 784 children (age range = 4-5 years), assigning them to either an experimental group (six months' participation in the PROMEHS program under the guidance of their teachers, who had received ad hoc training) or a waiting list group (no intervention). We found that PROMEHS improved preschoolers' social-emotional learning (SEL) competencies, prosocial behavior, and academic outcomes. The more practical activities were carried out at school, the more children's SEL competencies increased, and the more their internalizing and externalizing behaviors decreased. Furthermore, marginalized and disadvantaged children were those who benefited most from the program, displaying both greater improvements in SEL and more marked decreases in internalizing problems compared to the rest of the sample.

Does Online Implementation Make a Difference in the Effects of a Mental Health Curriculum at Schools?

COVID-19 changed and challenged education, with schools obliged to adapt to online settings. This study aims to evaluate the impact of a mental health curriculum implemented at schools, considering the implementation settings: online, onsite, and mixed (online and onsite). From kindergarten to high school, 933 students were evaluated by teachers regarding their social and emotional learning, strengths and difficulties, and academic outcomesin two measuring times: pre- and post-test. A qualitative analysis of teachers' adaptations to the online implementation was also conducted. Results revealed a positive impact with both mixed and onsite implementation. However, the mixed format demonstrated significant positive changes between the pre-and post-test, namely in relationship skills, responsible decision-making, internalized problems, and academic achievement. The mixed format with few online activities appears to have a more positive impact on students. Nevertheless, implementing social and emotional skills (SES) activities exclusively online seems to positively affect some SES domains more than onsite and mixed formats. Teachers used synchronous (e.g., digital platforms) and asynchronous (e.g., extra resources) adaptations for the implementation. This study shows that implementing mental health programs at schools, in this case, PROMEHS, is beneficial for students, even amidst the pandemic, and regardless of the implementation settings.