Abstract
The influence of emotion on thoughts, memories, behaviors and everyday decisions is currently being researched across multiple disciplines of psychology. Children and adolescents are not born with the skills needed to regulate their emotions; these skills are something learned over time. However, some children are never properly taught these skills, which can cause difficulties in the school environment because they are more likely to experience problems both academically and behaviorally. This paper explores the possible benefits of offering mental health services in schools that are focused towards promoting emotional health while also developing emotional regulation skills for children. Beginning with the ways in which children learn to express their emotions and the factors that contribute to an inability to express emotion appropriately, to the influence of emotions on academic performance, how emotional regulation skills can benefit academic success, how we can best build these emotional regulation skills in the school setting, discussion of Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT) which is an example of a service that could be used, the importance of parental involvement when offering these types of services and concluding with possible obstacles that could interfere with the effectiveness of these services in the school setting
Highlights
Affective Reactions and the Relation Between Awareness and EmotionThe way we assign value to the various components of our lives and our overall experiences is referred to as affective reactions (Huntsinger & Schnall, 2013)
The influence of emotion on thoughts, memories, behaviors and everyday decisions is currently being researched across multiple disciplines of psychology
The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors related to promoting emotional and mental health in schools and how providing services that support emotional health could lead to more positive student outcomes
Summary
The way we assign value to the various components of our lives and our overall experiences is referred to as affective reactions (Huntsinger & Schnall, 2013). Individuals go through life making decisions and rating life experiences while simultaneously considering an imaginary spectrum between two extremes This spectrum is used to measure the “goodness” or the “badness” of something which can externalize in many different ways neurologically, physiologically, cognitively or behaviorally based on what triggered the affective reaction. Research shows that children who suffer from past abuse or neglect have an impaired development of social cognition and could benefit from therapeutic interventions that improve their interpersonal communications (Koizumi & Takagishi, 2014) This is important to consider because a child who grew up with emotionally distant parents is not going to be able to express or interpret emotions the same way as someone who grew up in a communicative and emotionally supportive household
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