Improving SEL and prosocial behaviors in middle secondary school: The effectiveness of the PROMEHS curriculum on Italian students

Preadolescence is a critical period for the onset of mental health issues. Thus, secondary schools have a responsibility to promote students’ mental health and prevent social, emotional, and behavioral problems. This contribution presents the results of PROMEHS, a European school-based, universal mental health program. Participants were 433 Italian students (11-13 years; 217 females), split into experimental and control groups. Teachers completed two questionnaires, at the beginning and end of 2020/21 school year: the Social Skills Improvement System, Social Emotional Learning Edition (SSIS-SELb), measuring their students’ social-emotional learning competences; and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), assessing students’ mental health (i.e., prosocial behaviors, internalizing and externalizing problems). Between the pre- and post-test phases, teachers in the experimental group were trained on school mental health themes and carried out PROMEHS activities in their classrooms. Multivariate analysis showed that students in the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in social-emotional learning competences (i.e., self-awareness and relationship skills; p=.04) and prosocial behaviors (p=<.001). Implications of these findings will be discussed.