Life Skills And Adolescent Mental Health

Can school teach us to master life? This book confronts what the author sees as an ongoing trend in many Western democracies where citizens are increasingly being held accountable for their health and happiness. The author believes that the introduction of life skills in school shows a tendency to place more responsibility on the individual rather than address fundamental societal flaws that really should be solved politically. It examines how such responsibility to psychologically deal with these problems affects our mental health and quality of life. This book questions the fundamentals of the life mastery curriculum where we might be risking the creation of just another arena where children have to perform, challenging readers to evaluate more closely the premises, consequences and limitations of life mastery. The book, one of the first to question ‘life mastery’ as an achievable goal with critical reviews of the 21st century skills movement, will be of interest to psychologists, school counsellors, teachers, students, politicians, and any reader evaluating school curriculums in relation to the decline in youth and adolescent mental health.

To live a joyful and purposeful life, one needs to develop an ability to cope up with the changing environment and consider the changes positively; such ability is called as Life Skill. “Life Skills are abilities to adjust to changing situations in a positive manner which in turn will help individual face and to overcome the challenges of everyday life”- World Health Organization (WHO). Life skill education helps children and adolescents to transform knowledge, attitudes and values into accomplishment. It facilitates the progress of a variety of abilities that enable children and adolescents manage effectively with the obstacles of day to day life, allowing them to be socially and psychologically proficient. The term ‘life skills’ refers to a broad group of psychosocial and interpersonal skills that can help children make informed decision, communicate effectively and navigate their surroundings (UNICEF,2007).

This open access volume critically reviews a diverse body of scholarship and practice that informs the conceptualization, curriculum, teaching and measurement of life skills in education settings around the world. It discusses life skills as they are implemented in schools and non-formal education, providing both qualitative and quantitative evidence of when, with whom, and how life skills do or do not impact young women’s and men’s lives in various contexts. Specifically, it examines the nature and importance of life skills, and how they are taught. It looks at the synergies and differences between life skills educational programmes and the way in which they promote social and emotional learning, vocational/employment education, and health and sexuality education. Finally, it explores how life skills may be better incorporated into education and how such education can address structures and relations of power to help youth achieve desired future outcomes, and goals set out in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Life skills education has gained considerable attention by education policymakers, researchers and educators as being the sine qua non for later achievements in life. It is nearly ubiquitous in global and national education policies, including the SDGs, because life skills are regarded as essential for a diverse set of purposes: reducing poverty, achieving gender equality, promoting economic growth, addressing climate change, fostering peace and global citizenship, and creating sustainable and healthy communities. Yet, to achieve these broad goals, questions persist as to which life skills are important, who needs to learn them, how they can be taught, and how they are best measured. This book addresses these questions.

Fostering Child and Adolescent Mental Health in the Classroom provides educators and school personnel with a thorough, readable guide to some of the most common mental health issues they are likely to confront in the classroom. Editor Raymond J. Waller offers pre-service and in-service educators strategic tools to help take the proper steps toward addressing the mental health issues of their students.

Life skills education, using the peer-to-peer approach, can effectively promote youth health and protect young people from HIV, drugs, sexual abuse and other threats. This publication draws on experiences, lessons learned and recommendations from the 2005-2009 UNESCAP project "Strengthening Life Skills for Positive Youth Health Behaviour", which was implemented in Cambodia, China, Philippines and Sri Lanka. A youth-centered approach is adopted, with emphasis on psychological factors, social interaction and how to empower young people, especially out-of-school youth, with essential life skills to better deal with the many challenges they face in their daily lives. Wider socio-structural issues are addressed and key elements are put forward to help develop innovative and creative programmes and move Asia and the Pacific away from ineffective and costly single-problem focused strategies.

Presents a program that is designed to improve academic achievement and self-sufficiency for teenage mothers.

"This book related to fundamental recognitions that 1) children, adolescents, and families usually make no or very poor connections to specialty mental health (see Atkins et al. 1998; Catron, Harris, & Weiss, 1999), 2) schools are where children and youth are, and 3) many advantages accrue when education, mental health, and other youth-serving systems join together to better meet the mental health needs of students, in ways that reflect reducing and removing barriers to learning (Andis et al., 2002; Weist, 1997). National and global networks are increasingly recognizing the centrality of the SMH agenda as reflected in increasing funding, growing training opportunities, key policy initiatives, and an advancing research base that involves localities, states, regions and countries pursuing common themes"--