(PS10-C74) Addressing Children's Mental Ill-health with the PERMA Well-being Framework

Mental ill-health in children is a global issue, with the World Health Organisation (WHO) (2022) reporting that 10% of children and adolescents experience a mental disorder. These rates are closer to 15 to 20% in countries such as the US and Australia (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2020; CDC, 2021). Rates of anxiety and depression continue to rise in children (CDC, 2021). This in itself is concerning, but given the abundance of added stress in relation to current world disasters (e.g. COVID-19, climate change, political unrest) the risk of adversity continues to grow. Methods to address and prevent mental ill-health in children are sorely needed. The aim of positive psychology is not only to alleviate suffering associated with mental disorders, but to allow children to ‘flourish’ or attain well-being. The PERMA framework (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Achievement) and associated character strengths, are considered the building blocks of well-being (Seligman, 2011). We wanted to know whether the components of PERMA have a relationship with children’s (aged 5 to 12-years-old) well-being, mental health/ill-health and resilience. We included resilience as it is known to serve as a protective factor, helping to reduce the development of mental disorder (Davydov et al., 2010). 

We conducted a scoping review, where four databases were systematically searched and 17,166 articles were identified, 184 of which were included in the review. The review included frameworks, case studies, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, interventions, qualitative and mixed-methods studies, reviews and meta-analyses. Across all study types support for the notion that PERMA is related to children’s well-being, mental health and resilience was found. We found a large number of studies that included Relationships , in particular. There was only a very small number of studies which included Engagement and Meaning, and some character strengths were not found in any studies. The findings of the scoping review do, however, suggest that PERMA should be considered as an avenue for protecting children against the impacts of mental ill-health, as it is related to improved well-being, mental health and resilience. This has important implications for educational, clinical, family and community contexts. 

We recommend further focus should be given to how PERMA can be applied in intervention and prevention programs for children, particularly in schools. More consistency of measures is needed in this area, as it is difficult to compare the included components and outcomes. Engagement, Meaning and some character strengths are scarce in the literature and further research is required on how these relate to the outcomes. Finally, there is some evidence that age and cultural difference exist in how PERMA is experienced by children, offering a potential direction for future research.