Mental health programme may improve students’ schoolwork

A MENTAL health programme aimed at young children could improve academic performance, a conference has heard.

Zippy’s Friends, a programme which has already run in 16 other countries, was operated on a pilot basis in the north west, with academics concluding that it increased children’s emotional literacy skills and helped them to cope more with bereavement.

Details of the programme were outlined at the National Office for Suicide Prevention’s (NOSP) annual conference in Dublin.

Zippy’s Friends ran in schools in disadvantaged schools in Leitrim, Galway, Donegal and Sligo and involved 730 children with an average age of seven.

According to researchers from NUI Galway, the programme content was slotted into the SPHE (Social Personal and Health Education) curriculum and used a range of draw and write activities to help children deal with a set of issues such as bullying and bereavement.

Key findings included a significant decrease in hyperactivity levels, more developed communication skills and more cooperation between children themselves when it came to dealing with issues.

Teachers said the programme helped them to communicate better with children and one teacher described it as “an hour of closeness every day” with pupils.

However, time constraints were a barrier to the effectiveness of the programme, as was the situation in some schools where it was taught to two classes at the one time.

The pilot scheme ended a year ago but Aleisha Clarke of the Health Promotion Research Centre at NUI Galway said work was now beginning on checking whether the programme had helped improve the academic performance of those who took part, and on their longer term emotional behaviour and well-being.

She said international research indicated in other countries where the programme has run there has been academic improvement.

The Director of NOSP Geoff Day said the next step was to speak with Government about rolling out the project across the country.

The conference also heard from the director of the Health Promotion Research Centre in NUI Galway, Prof Margaret Barry, that anti-stigma campaigns aimed at making people more open about mental health issues can have a positive economic impact on a country.

She added there needed to be “political will at every level of policy” and a bottom-up approach to mental health.