Mental health project aimed at pupils

THE power of positive thinking is to be used in a project to see if improving the nation’s mental health and saving lives from being lost to suicide can be achieved by spreading the message to children in primary schools.

As part of her research for a PhD at University College Cork, Mary Spillane Buckley hopes 700 pupils aged nine and 11 can be taught how to cope with stressful situations and to see the glass as half full rather than half empty when things go against them. But as well as aiming to find out the benefits of positive mental health, the project could also raise vital funding to educate children in one of the world’s poorest countries.

The children in participating schools will be encouraged to raise money to support Salesian priests from Limerick in Swaziland, where there is no free education and it costs €150 to send a child to school. “The focus will be to help children become more aware of how fortunate they are compared to those in other parts of the world, and to teach them about the value of education and also, maybe, the value of money,” said Ms Spillane Buckley.

“With positive thinking, we want them to be able to see their way through tough times, because everybody faces a crisis of one sort another in their lives,” she said. “Positive mental health and mental illness are totally different things, but we need to take away the stigma around mental health. If we start with children and they can learn coping skills and self-esteem, we could save lives into the future by teaching them to think positively and to talk to someone if they have problems right through life.”

With the aim of using this intervention as part of social, personal and health education (SPHE) in schools in the Mallow, Midleton and Mitchelstown areas of Cork from next autumn, it is intended to assess the pupils’ mental and social wellbeing before and after the year-long project.

Ms Spillane Buckley is a former primary teacher but has experience of important research, having developed a treatment for colic almost 20 years ago when her daughter Rebecca suffered from the illness. The project was launched last night at Mary Immaculate College in Limerick.