Grant: Doctoral: Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarships

In order to face the multiple challenges of adolescence, youth must develop proper coping and social skills such as, social awareness, empathy, emotional regulation, peaceful conflict resolution, and challenging negative thoughts in order to raise self-esteem. School-based, social-emotional learning (SEL) programs in the US have shown to be very effective in teaching these skills and thus improving self-esteem and grades, and reducing depressive symptoms and delinquent behaviour. In addition to this, it is important for adolescents to learn how to seek help when they are distressed or experiencing depressive symptoms. Therefore I propose to create an SEL program for Canadian middle schools which will consist of 4, 1-hour sessions and teach coping, social and help-seeking skills. To test the impact of this program, I will evaluate changes in symptoms of depression and delinquent behaviour, number of friendships, prosocial problem-solving, self-esteem, coping, perceived stigma around seeking help for a mental illness, and intentions and knowledge around help-seeking. These measures will be compared between adolescents who have participated in the program and those who have participated in a control program before the program, a week after the program, and 6 months later. I hypothesize that, compared to control adolescents, adolescents who experienced the SEL program will have lower depression symptom severity and perceived stigma around seeking help for a mental illness, less delinquent behaviour, and higher self-esteem, coping, intentions/knowledge around help-seeking, number of prosocial problem-solving solutions, and number of mutual friend nominations. Evidence of positive effects of this program would have important implications for the use of SEL programs in Canadian schools in order to prevent coping, social, and help-seeking skills deficits, depression, and delinquent behaviour.