Faith and Wellness: A Daily Mental Health Resource

The Faith and Wellness Resource is a repository of evidence based social-emotional learning practices developed by School Mental Health Ontario and the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association. The goal of this project was to evaluate the resource: A randomized control trial evaluation was conducted with over 200 teachers from 19 school boards across Ontario, as well as over 270 students from 11 schools. Findings indicated that use of the Faith and Wellness Resource is associated with positive changes for teachers (including social-emotional learning knowledge and confidence, as well as teacher well-being), student social-emotional skill development, and the classroom climate. Frequency of using the practices is important, such that the more times teachers implemented the practices, the better.

Results from this research project support the effectiveness and usefulness of the Faith and Wellness Resource for teachers and students in Catholic elementary schools across Ontario. Overall, the Faith and Wellness Resource was well received by teachers and students, easily implemented in the classroom, and helped to support students’ social-emotional learning skills as well as their general mental health and wellbeing.

This project was funded by the McConnell Family Foundation and School Mental Health Ontario. For more information on the Faith and Wellness Resource, click here. This project is also part of the Innovation and Scale-Up Lab, which aims to identify evidence-based, implementation sensitive mental health programming, click here for more info.

School Mental Health Ontario, the Ontario English Catholic Teachers’ Association, as well as the Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation are currently working toward a similar set of resources aimed at secondary students. Stay tuned for more!