Promoting Children's Well-Being

Summary: Promoting and maintaining the psychological well being of children is an important public health objective. A comprehensive preventive approach is required which includes universal, selective and indicated interventions. Schools provide a potentially useful context for delivering psychological prevention programmes with evaluations finding encouraging short term results, more so for programmes focusing upon anxiety rather than depression. Programmes which are targeted on children with mild or moderate problems produce greater reductions in symptoms although the potential benefits of universally delivered programmes in maintaining psychological well-being have seldom been assessed. There is considerable variability in the effectiveness of programmes based upon the same theoretical model suggesting the need to explore important mediators and moderators. In addition, the cost benefits of psychological prevention programmes and their sustainability within everyday schools needs to be determined before their widespread use can be advocated.