Roundtable Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

Universal Screening Of Mental Health And Well-Being In Students And Colleagues At A Pre-Kindergarten To 12th Grade School (#356)

Sharron Russell 1
  1. The Shipley School, Bryn Mawr, PA, United States

Screening for mental health has been a regular practice at The Shipley School since 2015. While it began with only 6th and 9th graders, it was expanded to all 6th through 12th graders in the fall of 2016. Initially motivated by the loss of 2 students to suicide, the screening now includes the original measures of anxiety and depression, but also includes grit (Duckworth & Quinn, 2009), and EPOCH (engagement, perseverance, optimism, connectedness and happiness) measures (Kern, Benson, Steinberg & Steinberg, 2015) for students and the PERMA workplace profiler (Kern, 2014) for colleagues. Since adopting a school-wide Positive Education practice in August 2017, the school has seen increases in several areas of the EPOCH and PERMA profiler, as well as modest declines in anxiety and depression. This year’s survey of both students and colleagues (teaching and non-teaching employees of the school) will be further analyzed for correlations between the well-being of students and colleagues, the relationship between student achievement and well-being, and the potential impact of the school-wide commitment to Positive Education. Discussion of the process for collecting the student and colleague data will be included, as well as the 2018 results and analysis.