Positive Mental Health

Mental health and wellbeing is a hugely important agenda in education, both nationally and internationally. Promoting Positive Mental Health in the Primary School unpacks scientific and psychological research and evidence to explain positive mental health through the lens of a primary classroom in the language of teaching professionals. Chapter by chapter, the book focuses on specific elements fundamental to positive mental health promotion in the classroom, including developing positive relationships, emotional literacy, empowering children as learners as well as the importance of teacher wellbeing, and illustrates how these can be achieved. It offers: An examination into the connection between positive mental health and good teaching Guidance underpinned by evidence for teachers and school leaders who wish to embed a consistent approach to positive mental health promotion Practical suggestions for whole school professional learning Written from first-hand experience in both teaching and research, this accessible text makes positive mental health promotion meaningful to teachers, helping them build understanding and move from theory into practice. It is an essential resource for all practising teachers, trainee teachers, school support staff and school leaders.

Positive Mental Health for Children and Adolescents: Fighting Stigma and Promoting Resiliency examines the main mechanisms involved in improving mental health in children and adolescents, including social and biological processes, as well as effective treatments. By taking into account diverse settings and cultures, the book combines academic, research, and clinical contributions and sets forth how it can be translated into effective clinical practice. In addition, the book promotes the study, treatment, care, and prevention of mental and emotional disorders and disabilities involving children, adolescents, and their families, and includes emerging knowledge on mental health problems and good practice in child and adolescent psychiatry as relayed by experts from around the world. Focuses on the empirical evidence base for work in child and adolescent mental health Appraises the available evidence and underscores where it is lacking Demonstrates the implementation of research into practice Highlights the relevance of existing knowledge for clinical management Considers service and policy implications

This book provides a new generation of research in which scholars are investigating mental health and human development as not merely the absence of illness or dysfunction, but also the presence of subjective well-being. Subjective well-being is a fundamental facet of the quality of life. The quality of an individual’s life can be assessed externally and objectively or internally and subjectively. From an objective standpoint, other people measure and judge another’s life according to criteria such as wealth or income, educational attainment, occupational prestige, and health status or longevity. Nations, communities, or individuals who are wealthier, have more education, and live longer are considered to have higher quality of life or personal well-being. The subjective standpoint emerged during the 1950s as an important alternative to the objective approach to measuring individual’s well-being. Subjectively, individuals evaluate their own lives as evaluations made, in theory, after reviewing, summing, and weighing the substance of their lives in social context. Research has clearly shown that measures of subjective well-being, which are conceptualized as indicators of mental health (or ‘mental well-being’), are factorially distinct from but correlated with measures of symptoms of common mental disorders such as depression. Despite countless proclamations that health is not merely the absence of illness, there had been little or no empirical research to verify this assumption. Research now supports the hypothesis that health is not merely the absence of illness, it is also the presence of higher levels of subjective well-being. In turn, there is growing recognition of the personal and social utility of subjective well-being, both higher levels of hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. Increased subjective well-being has been linked with higher personal and social ‘goods’: higher business profits, more worker productivity, greater employee retention; increased protection against mortality; increased protection against the onset and increase of physical disability with aging; improved cognitive and immune system functioning; and increased levels of social capital such as civic responsibility, generativity, community involvement and volunteering. This edited volume brings together for the first time the growing scientific literature on positive mental health that is now being conducted in many countries other than the USA and provides students and scholars with an invaluable source for teaching and for generating new ideas for furthering this important line of research.

Is mental health provision a concern in your school? Are you looking to develop a whole school approach to mental health issues? Do you need targeted, evidence-informed strategies? This book emphasises the importance of creating a whole school culture which promotes a positive attitude towards mental health. Suitable for both primary and secondary school teachers and leaders, it provides you with concise, practical guidance to help improve your existing mental health provision, all backed by the latest research.

The book provides a new theory of well-being designed to integrate many disparate concepts of well-being, such as subjective well-being, personal happiness, mental well-being, emotional well-being, psychological well-being, hedonic well-being, social well-being, life satisfaction, domain satisfaction, and eudaimonia. It lays the foundation for a new a theory of mental well-being based on a hierarchical perspective of positive mental health and guided by the concept of positive balance. Written by a well-known expert in the field, this book addresses the issue of positive balance related to physiological, emotional, cognitive, meta-cognitive, developmental and social-ecological levels of an individual and analyses the factors at each level that contribute to an individual’s positive mental health experience. It discusses in detail the effects of neurochemicals such as dopamine, serotonin, or cortisol; positive and negative affect; satisfaction in salient and multiple life domains vis-à-vis dissatisfaction in life domains; positive versus negative evaluations about one’s life using certain standards of comparison; positive psychological traits of personal growth and intrinsic motivation, etc. vis-à-vis negative traits like pessimism and impulsiveness; and perceived social resources like social contribution and social actualization vis-à-vis perceived constraints like exclusion and ostracism. This original work is of interest to students, researchers and practitioners of quality of life and wellbeing studies, positive psychology, developmental psychology and mental health..

National surveys consistently reveal that an inordinate number of students report high levels of boredom, anger, and stress in school, which often leads to their disengagement from critical learning and social development. If the ultimate goal of schools is to educate young people to become responsible and critically thinking citizens who can succeed in life, understanding factors that stimulate them to become active agents in their own leaning is critical. A new field labeled "positive psychology" is one lens that can be used to investigate factors that facilitate a student’s sense of agency and active school engagement. The purposes of this groundbreaking Handbook are to 1) describe ways that positive emotions, traits, and institutions promote school achievement and healthy social/emotional development 2) describe how specific positive-psychological constructs relate to students and schools and support the delivery of school-based services and 3) describe the application of positive psychology to educational policy making. By doing so, the book provides a long-needed centerpiece around which the field can continue to grow in an organized and interdisciplinary manner. Key features include: Comprehensive – this book is the first to provide a comprehensive review of what is known about positive psychological constructs and the school experiences of children and youth. Topical coverage ranges from conceptual foundations to assessment and intervention issues to service delivery models. Intrapersonal factors (e.g., hope, life satisfaction) and interpersonal factors (e.g., positive peer and family relationships) are examined as is classroom-and-school-level influences (e.g., student-teacher and school-community relations). Interdisciplinary Focus – this volume brings together the divergent perspectives, methods, and findings of a broad, interdisciplinary community of scholars whose work often fails to reach those working in contiguous fields. Chapter Structure – to insure continuity, flow, and readability chapters are organized as follows: overview, research summary, relationship to student development, examples of real-world applications, and a summarizing table showing implications for future research and practice. Methodologies – chapters feature longitudinal studies, person-centered approaches, experimental and quasi-experimental designs and mixed methods.