Youth mental health issues are a growing public health concern. Resilience has been identified as a mitigating factor for adverse mental health outcomes. Schools have shown an increasing interest in strategies to support students’ mental health. The purpose of this study was to evaluate a school-based 1:1 health coaching program designed to build resilience by teaching students coping skills and strategies to increase their self-efficacy.
Study Design:
Single group intervention study with pre/post measures.
Setting/Participants:
Sixth grade students (aged 11-12 years) attending an urban middle school.
Intervention:
Youth participated in up to 6 resiliency-focused, 1:1 health coaching sessions completed over 8 weeks and conducted during the school day. Health coaches utilized motivational interviewing techniques to set and work toward resilience-related goals focused on improving coping skills and self-efficacy with youth during the intervention (January through March 2020).
Main Outcome Measures:
The Child and Youth Resilience Measure-Revised and other mental health assessments were completed at baseline and immediately following completion of the intervention to evaluate outcomes. Paired sample t-tests and Hedges’ g effect sizes were conducted to evaluate intervention effectiveness. Student participation rates were assessed throughout the intervention.
Results:
287 youth participated in the study (87% participation rate) and participated in over 85% of health coaching sessions offered. A paired samples t-test revealed the youth resilience significantly increased from pre (M = 75.7, SD = 6.9) to post (M = 77.6, SD = 6.8) intervention (t[257] = 3.73, p < .001) and the size of the effect was medium (g = 0.29, 95% CI = 0.11, 0.46).
Conclusions:
The findings demonstrate that health coaching can be an effective strategy for improving resiliency in youth. Future studies evaluating how to effectively disseminate this intervention strategy are planned.
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