Promoting emotional health among children

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The aim of the current study is to implement the early intervention program, COPE (Comparisons, Openness, Peers and Esteem), designed to build resilience and improve factors related to mental health problems among primary school children. It focuses on children aged between 8 and 10 years, as this is a crucial time to implement early intervention strategies to enhance children’s abilities to cope with psychosocial stressors and foster the development of positive mental health and well-being. This is also the age when children begin to frequently use social comparisons and are most vulnerable to the negative impact of these comparisons. Social comparisons are frequently used by children to learn about their own abilities and individual differences. As these social comparisons are an integral component of children’s social and emotional development, they can not be eliminated. However, for many children, an over reliance on social comparisons can lead to maladaptive coping skills, negative thought processes, pessimistic attributions, low self-esteem, and other negative beliefs about the self; all of which are known to be factors that heighten the risk of developing mental health problems. We have developed and trialled our program, COPE, which will build children’s resilience and equip children with strategies to identify, appraise and modify the use of social comparisons in ways that strengthen their self-esteem and other self-concepts, and thus reduce the risk of developing mental health problems. COPE specifically targets the use of social comparisons in four domains that are particularly salient and important for fostering the well-being of children. These include physical appearance, relationships with peers, physical activity and sport, and school achievement. For the current project we will conduct a more extensive evaluation of the COPE program, with a particular focus on how it improves the mental health of 8 to 10 year old girls and boys. It is expected that children who participate in the COPE program will demonstrate increased positive affect, lower levels of negative affect, lower depressive and anxiety symptoms, higher levels of resiliency, and more positive self-concepts than a wait-list control group. The effectiveness of COPE will be evaluated at the completion of the program and also at five follow-up periods: 1-month, 6-months, 12-months, 18-months and 24-months post-intervention.

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