Mental health commission report July 2010 - June 2011 [.pdf]

Positive Thinking Skills Update – Shari HassanProgress report in 20091. Finalised the 54 month follow-up for the longitudinal study conducted in 2004;2. 54 month attrition rate: 80.2% as 730 participants could not be found after 5 years;3. Lost a significant number of participants due to:• Transition to high schools;• DET new rules which did not allow us to obtain students’ contact address and details fromschools;• Separate consent form for parent and student; and• Moved participants4. Revised the Positive Thinking Resources which incorporates new key aspects to enhance mentalhealth benefits for 8-9 year olds. Key skills involved are:• Age appropriate emotional competence skills, e.g. Identification and awareness of comfortableand uncomfortable feelings, expression of feelings.• Age appropriate cognitive skills, e.g. identification of thoughts and relationship betweenthoughts and feelings.5. Conducted the pilot study in Narrogin in June 2009. Results show that there was a significantdifference between pre and post workshop self-efficacy scores (t(9) =-3.451, p