Abstract
The school at present has been facing such challenges as non-decreasing extent of bullying, suicides and high level of adolescents’ behavioural as well as emotional problems. This calls for more research on positive adolescent development, its strengths, emotional and social areas of health, which can be developed. The goal of the research: to investigate adolescent social emotional health and empathy and their relationships. The research methodologies: Social and Emotional Health Survey (Furlong et al., 2014; You et al., 2015) and Interpersonal Reactivity Index (Davis, 1980). The sample: adolescents of 12–18 years old. The research conclusions: positive correlation between dimensions of adolescents’ social and emotional health and empathy were identified. The results of the conducted research are significant in the context of positive development of adolescents and contribute to development of school learners’ social and emotional health at school.
Highlights
Mental health is considered to be one of the more relevant aspects of adolescents’ health
The definition of mental health was expanded by the Mental Health Foundation and it is explained as a combination of emotional wellbeing, social functioning and a big number of competences that can be developed and improved
The completed research showed that the construct of emotional and social health and strengths are linked with high level of mental health, psychological resilience and well-being
Summary
Mental health is considered to be one of the more relevant aspects of adolescents’ health. The correlation analysis allowed to reveal a positive significant correlation between the adolescents’ emotional competence of the SEHS-S and the indicators of empathic concern (r = 0.48; p ≤ 0.01), perspective-taking (r = 0.45; p ≤ 0.01), fantasy (r = 0.35; p ≤ 0.01) of the IRI scale and a very weak negative correlation with personal distress (r = -0.13; p ≤ 0.01). The conducted correlation analysis revealed relationships (see: Figure 2), which allowed to conclude that the sub-scale of adolescents’ empathic concern (IRI) were significantly related to the following items of the sub-scale of empathy (SEHS-S): “I feel bad when someone gets his or her feelings hurt” (r = 0.57; p ≤ 0.01); “I try to understand what other people go through” (r = 0.47; p ≤ 0.01); “I try to understand how other people feel and think” (r = 0.40; p ≤ 0.01).
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