Abstract
In order to manage with the burden of mental health problems in the world we need to develop cost-effective and safe preventive interventions. Education about resilience to support the ability to cope with life challenges in general, may be a useful strategy. We consider the concepts of Theory of Mind and Mentalization to be relevant in this context. In this paper we describe a simple modular intervention program based on these concepts which can be tailored to specific needs and situations in individual therapy as well as group levels. The program has shown promising results in pilot studies and is now tested in controlled trials in settings such as schools and educational institutions, adults diagnosed with ADHD, and children in care.
Highlights
There is an increasing awareness that the burden of mental health problems in the world cannot be addressed by therapeutic interventions alone (Kazdin and Blase, 2011)
Resilience and Mentalization Resilience is defined as successful adaptation to adversity, including successful recovery from adverse life events and sustainability in relation to life challenges, individually and on group- and community-levels (Zautra et al, 2010)
Trials have indicated that a mentalization-based approach can be effective in reducing bullying in schools, when applied at a whole-system level (Fonagy et al, 2009). Based on these findings we have developed a modular mentalization-based intervention program that we call ‘the Resilience Program’ in which a social field education model is combined with a self-directed web-based approach
Summary
There is an increasing awareness that the burden of mental health problems in the world cannot be addressed by therapeutic interventions alone (Kazdin and Blase, 2011). A number of meta-analyses suggests that mental health education has positive effects on perceived health and behavior in a wide range of settings (Montgomery et al, 2006; Knouse et al, 2008; Donker et al, 2009; Baskin et al, 2010; Xia et al, 2011), such as parent management training (Montgomery et al, 2006), anxiety (Hedman et al, 2011), eating disorders (Perkins et al, 2009), and in pediatric health care (Cushing and Steele, 2010). The apparent most important behavioral components in these programs are specific goal setting, self-monitoring, feedback, and contingency management (Cushing and Steele, 2010), but it is not always clear whether these programs build a capacity for increased resilience to withstand future challenges.
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