Resilience Academy Mental Health Classes for Teens

The Pieta House Resilience Academy is a 6-week in school programme that teaches 13-14-year-olds with positive mental health skills so they can tackle any challenges they may face in a healthy and constructive way.

Its long-term goal is to reduce the number of young people attempting suicide, experiencing suicidal thoughts and engaging in self-harm by increasing resilience, teaching coping strategies and encouraging help-seeking behaviour. Perhaps most importantly, the programme aims to tackle the stigma around mental health in Ireland by empowering young people to set the tone for current and future.

As the school year draws to a close so does the Resilience Academy for the 2017/18 academic year.

Since September 2017, over 600 students across 10 counties have completed the Resilience Academy. Our team of facilitators has grown as has our knowledge and love for the programme. Bookings for the next school year have already commenced - 56 schools have already confirmed a place!

We will be taking the summer months to reflect on the year that’s past and plan on how to make the programme even better for next year. But our initial examination of student questionnaires (before and after the programme) has provided some great results:

On completion, students showed particularly high increases in hopefulness, help-seeking, and the ability to handle upsetting feelings. Interestingly, students showed a 20% increase in positive feelings toward their school communities. Students also demonstrated that they retained specific knowledge acquired through the course in relation to understanding their emotions, adapting their thoughts and seeking help from appropriate sources when needed. Overall, we can state that there is a 99% chance that students will gain resilience following engagement with the programme.

Links:

• Pieta House's Resilience Academy aims to help young people deal