This report builds on a highly valued predecessor, the 1994 Institute of Medicine (IOM) report entitled Reducing Risks for Mental Disorders: Frontiers for Preventive Intervention Research. That report provided the basis for understanding prevention science, elucidating its then-existing research base, and contemplating where it should go in the future. This report documents that an increasing number of mental, emotional, and behavioral problems in young people are in fact preventable. The proverbial ounce of prevention will indeed be worth a pound of cure: effectively applying the evidence-based prevention interventions at hand could potentially save billions of dollars in associated costs by avoiding or tempering these disorders in many individuals. Furthermore, devoting significantly greater resources to research on even more effective prevention and promotion efforts, and then reliably implementing the findings of such research, could substantially diminish the human and economic toll.

Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities

Play is essential to development because it contributes to the cognitive, physical, social, and emotional well-being of children and youth. Play also offers an ideal opportunity for parents to engage fully with their children. Despite the benefits derived from play for both children and parents, time for free play has been markedly reduced for some children. This report addresses a variety of factors that have reduced play, including a hurried lifestyle, changes in family structure, and increased attention to academics and enrichment activities at the expense of recess or free child-centered play. This report offers guidelines on how pediatricians can advocate for children by helping families, school systems, and communities consider how best to ensure that play is protected as they seek the balance in children's lives to create the optimal developmental milieu.

/pdf/the-importance-of-play-in-promoting-healthy-child-3r84szpzd4.pdf

The importance of play in promoting healthy child development and maintaining strong parent-child bonds

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1035&context=managementfacpub

Positive Organizational Behavior in the Workplace The Impact of Hope, Optimism, and Resilience

Positive education is defined as education for both traditional skills and for happiness. The high prevalence worldwide of depression among young people, the small rise in life satisfaction, and the synergy between learning and positive emotion all argue that the skills for happiness should be taught in school. There is substantial evidence from well controlled studies that skills that increase resilience, positive emotion, engagement and meaning can be taught to schoolchildren. We present the story of teaching these skills to an entire school—Geelong Grammar School—in Australia, and we speculate that positive education will form the basis of a ‘new prosperity’, a politics that values both wealth and well‐being.

https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/512189/Seligman_Positive_Education.pdf

Positive Education: Positive Psychology and Classroom Interventions.

Objective: To review systematically prospective, observational, cohort studies of the association between positive well-being and mortality using meta-analytic methods. Recent years have witnessed increased interest in the relationship between positive psychological well-being and physical health. Methods: We searched general bibliographic databases: Medline, PsycINFO, Web of Science, and PubMed up to January 2008. Two reviewers independently extracted data on Study characteristics, quality, and estimates of associations. Results: There were 35 studies (26 articles) investigating mortality in initially healthy Populations and 35 studies (28 articles) of disease populations. The meta-analyses showed that positive psychological well-being was associated with reduced mortality in both the healthy population (combined hazard ratio (HR) = 0.82; 95% Confidence Interval (Cl) = 0.76-0.89; p < .001) and the disease Population (combined FIR = 0.98; CI = 0.95-1.00; p = .030) studies. There were indications Of publication bias in this literature, although the fail-safe numbers were 2444 and 1397 for healthy and disease Population studies,, respectively. Intriguingly, meta-analysis of studies that controlled for negative affect showed that the protective effects of positive psychological well-being were independent of negative affect. Both positive affect (e.g., emotional well-being, positive mood, joy, happiness, vigor, energy) and positive trait-like dispositions (e.g., life satisfaction, hopefulness, optimism, sense of humor) were associated with reduced mortality in healthy population Studies. Positive psychological well-being was significantly associated with reduced cardiovascular mortality in healthy population studies, and with reduced death rates in patients with renal failure and with human immunodeficiency virus-infection. Conclusions: The Current review suggests that positive psychological well-being has a favorable effect on survival in both healthy and diseased populations.

Positive psychological well-being and mortality: a quantitative review of prospective observational studies.

The resilience factor: 7 essential skills for overcoming life's inevitable obstacles.

The authors investigated the effectiveness and specificity of the Penn Resiliency Program (PRP; J. E. Gillham, L. H. Jaycox, K. J. Reivich, M. E. P. Seligman, & T. Silver, 1990), a cognitive–behavioral depression prevention program. Children (N = 697) from 3 middle schools were randomly assigned to PRP, Control (CON), or the Penn Enhancement Program (PEP; K. J. Reivich, 1996; A. J. Shatte, 1997), an alternate intervention that controls for nonspecific intervention ingredients. Children’s depressive symptoms were assessed through 3 years of follow-up. There was no intervention effect on average levels of depressive symptoms in the full sample. Findings varied by school. In 2 schools, PRP significantly reduced depressive symptoms across the follow-up relative to both CON and PEP. In the 3rd school, PRP did not prevent depressive symptoms. The authors discuss the findings in relation to previous research on PRP and the dissemination of prevention programs.

/pdf/school-based-prevention-of-depressive-symptoms-a-randomized-3nuv48wii7.pdf

School-Based Prevention of Depressive Symptoms: A Randomized Controlled Study of the Effectiveness and Specificity of the Penn Resiliency Program

The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles

Optimism, Pessimism, And Explanatory Style

Previous studies suggest that school-based cognitive-behavioral interventions can reduce and prevent depressive symptoms in youth. This pilot study investigated the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioral depression prevention program, the Penn Resiliency Program for Children and Adolescents (the PR

Andrew J. Shatté

Papers

The resilience factor: 7 essential skills for overcoming life's inevitable obstacles.

School-Based Prevention of Depressive Symptoms: A Randomized Controlled Study of the Effectiveness and Specificity of the Penn Resiliency Program

The Resilience Factor: 7 Keys to Finding Your Inner Strength and Overcoming Life's Hurdles

Optimism, Pessimism, And Explanatory Style

School-Based Prevention Of Depression And Anxiety Symptoms In Early Adolescence: A Pilot Of A Parent Intervention Component