It’s called Promehs and it’s a European project to help improve the social and emotional skills of teachers and students. The initiative aims to offer training to school operators to enhance the promotion of mental health at school
Responsibility, effort, bureaucratic duties, continuous (delicate and sometimes problematic) confrontation with students, with families, with colleagues. The teacher’s work is often subjected to high stress which can also have repercussions on the well-being of the pupils. To answer (also) to these difficulties e promote the mental health of students and teachers in schoolsthe project was born three years ago Promehs – Promoting Mental Health at Schools which involved 6 thousand students from six European countries, their teachers and families.
Recent studies show that about 20% of children experience school difficulties and, often, these difficulties begin before the age of 14. There is therefore a need for timely interventions and the school offers an ideal context for the promotion of mental health, already working with 5-6 year old children.
Although many initiatives have already been launched, a careful analysis of national educational policies at European level shows how attention to well-being in school contexts is not yet a priority, and there is a lack of programs whose effectiveness in promoting health has been experimentally verified mental at school.
Nevertheless, through targeted activities involving teachers and students, it is possible to increase their social and emotional skills. This is demonstrated by the data collected at the end of the Promehs experimentation phase. The research project, financed by the European Union within the Erasmus+ tenders, was conducted in six countries (Croatia, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Portugal, Romania) and involved ten thousand students and their teachers. Families were also involved in the process.
In Italy, 1,400 students took part, from kindergarten to secondary school, and 500 teachers from Lombardy and Piedmont. The study was carried out by an international network of researchers, public authorities, scientific networks and associations led by the University of Milano-Bicocca. The participants were divided into two groups: the experimental one, which took part in Promehs activities in the 2020-2021 school year, and the control group which only came into contact with the Program at the end of the research. Activities aimed at promoting mental health ranged from drawing to story building to dramatization.
From the results of the tests carried out before and after the experimental phase, it emerged that the type of intervention proposed is effective even in different socio-cultural realities such as those of the six countries involved. There have been significant results and among teachers, in particular with regard to self-efficacy in classroom management, and among students who have increased their ability to understand their own and others’ emotionsto build positive interpersonal relationships and to make decisions in challenging situations.
As for the results in Italy, a strong growth in resilience was observed among the teachers involved in the trial.
Among students, the most marked improvements were found among primary school children and lower secondary school children, who showed a significant increase especially in the ability to recognize their emotions. The presence of positive social behaviors increased in all students, especially those in the lower secondary school. There was also a reduction in behavior problems.
The manuals developed by the research network constitute a real curriculum that could become a support tool for teachers if – as hoped by the experts involved in the project – it were included in the training courses for the promotion of mental health. “The promising results of the Promehs – Promoting Mental Health at Schools trial show how it is possible to implement an effective program that focuses on the school as a privileged context for promoting mental health“, he explains Ilaria Grazzani, professor of Developmental and Educational Psychology at the Department of Human Sciences for Education of the University of Milano-Bicocca and coordinator of the international project. “Within a year, the program will be made commercially available and those who use it will be able to count on training by the research group.”
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The opening photo is by Daiano Cristini for Agenzia Sintesi.