The Impact of the Aussie Optimism Program on the Emotional Coping of 5- to 6-Year-Old Children

Selina Oorloff; Rosanna Rooney; Natalie Baughman; Robert Kane; Maryanne McDevitt; Aidan Bryant

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.570518

The Impact of the Aussie Optimism Program on the Emotional Coping of 5- to 6-Year-Old Children

Front Psychol. 2021 Aug 11:12:570518. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.570518. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Selina Oorloff¹, Rosanna Rooney¹, Natalie Baughman¹, Robert Kane¹, Maryanne McDevitt¹, Aidan Bryant¹

Affiliation

¹ School of Population Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Curtin University, Perth, WA, Australia.

Abstract

Research indicates that mental health disorders can occur in children as young as 4 years of age, prompting the need for prevention programs for young children. The ability to use healthy strategies to cope with emotions is a protective factor against mental health disorders that can be effectively taught to children from an early age. The current study used a pre-test post-test cluster randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of the new Aussie Optimism: I Spy Feelings Program. The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of the program on children's emotional coping. The program included content on emotion regulation strategies, focusing on the emotions of happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and worry. The participants were 73 children (intervention = 33; control = 40) from pre-primary classes. Four schools were cluster randomized to the intervention or control group, resulting in two schools in each condition. Parents completed measures of their children's emotional coping with sadness, anger and worry. Children in the intervention group participated in ten sessions of the I Spy Feelings Program, spread over 5 weeks. The results indicated a significant, small to moderate intervention effect for coping with anger. Children in the control group decreased in their ability to cope with anger, while children in the intervention group remained stable. No intervention effects were found for coping with sadness or worry, with results for these emotions staying stable across time for both groups. This pilot study will inform the further development of the program. The effects of the program on coping with anger provide support for the use of emotion regulation strategies in intervention programs to maintain healthy emotional coping, which is a protective factor against internalizing and externalizing disorders in childhood.

Keywords: early childhood; early intervention; emotion regulation; emotional coping; externalizing disorders; internalizing disorders; prevention programs.