One in every 10 young children is at significant risk of developing mental health problems, a study of Year 4 students due to be published this week has warned.
Conduct-related issues tend to extend themselves into adulthood if they are not addressed early on...
The study, Building Resilience In Schoolchildren, identifies the key risk factors for young people developing social, emotional and behavioural difficulties (SEBD) as well as positive factors leading to an increase in pro-social behaviour.
Students’ peer groups, bullying and the amount of parental attention were all major factors.
This was the second phase of a four-step longitudinal study of Maltese students’ social and emotional well-being, explained Carmel Cefai, the co-author and director of the European Centre for Educational Resilience and Socio-Emotional Health.
“We had already analysed the same cohort of students when they were in Year 1, as part of a previous study,” Dr Cefai said. This latest study looked at the same group of 500-odd students some years on.
“We found that approximately 10 per cent of students exhibit some form of SEBD, which is more or less the same prevalence we found among the cohort when they were in Year 1,” he said.
But while some children became more pro-social, others became more prone to SEBD issues. “Boys, for example, appear to suffer more from SEBD than girls.”
Not that girls have it easy – SEBD incidences among them are also on the rise, reflecting international trends.
Something which concerned Dr Cefai was the high rate of conduct-related issues among boys.
“Research has shown how conduct-related issues tend to extend themselves into adulthood if they are not addressed early on. This doesn’t necessarily mean that a child with SEBD will turn into an antisocial adult,” he cautioned, “but unless we help children from a young age, we’re leaving them on their own and vulnerable to longer-term behavioural problems.”
Risk factors were cumulative.
“Take single parents. The research shows how children of single parents are struggling. Not because of some failure of the parent but because such parents are themselves at risk of poverty, have little time to dedicate to parenting and are more prone to stress. And these are all SEBD risk factors in themselves.”
According to the report, pupils with five or more risk factors have a 75 per cent of developing SEBD in their formative years. It asserts that “the more we reduce the risk factors and increase promotive ones, the more chance vulnerable children have of taking a resilient pathway”.
This “resilient pathway” is what Dr Cefai hopes the four-part study will eventually identify: A portrait of students who succeed in advancing their pro-social behaviour despite being exposed to several SEBD risk factors.
“The students sampled in this study are in Form 1 now. Once they reach Form 3, we’ll analyse them again and try and emerge with a clear profile of resilient children,” Dr Cefai explained.
The message emerging from all the research was that SEBD among children was far from inevitable, Dr Cefai insisted.
“Even if children are at risk, they can bounce back. And the younger children are, the easier it is to shape their trajectory. This study is clear: resilience is a message of hope”.