Forget about Illness. Let’s Talk Wellness.
The fields of applied Psychologies have traditionally focused on illness: illness development, illness prevention, and illness diagnostics. Only in recent history has there been a shift into observing and predicting wellness and well-being, and what factors promote these factors. Do not misunderstand me; I am not blind to the importance of understanding and preventing negative development or mental illness. I do believe, however, that understanding what factors act in a protective way can provide as much information as the other direction. I don’t want to throw the word “resilience” around, as we all know how difficult it is to not only describe what resilience is, but how extraordinarily, somewhat impossible, it is to operationalize. That being said, I do believe we can learn a lot about the health of our population not only through measures of illness, but through measures of wellness and positive health development.
As an MA Human Development student here in the department of Education and Counseling Psychology, you may think that my point of view is biased; I would probably agree with you. Getting a snapshot into the lives of our youth can provide insurmountable information about what factors promote wellness, well-being, and overall positive development. Childhood and adolescent experiences, as we know, have long lasting effects on a person’s adjustment, future success, and overall health. Initiatives to better understand childhood and adolescent wellness, especially at a neighborhood and school level, have been in development for the past decade. Specifically, researchers, psychologists, pediatricians, and health geographers have developed instruments to assess the lives of youth in order to better understand healthy development in our neighborhoods and schools.
The Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) have developed two instruments: the Early Development Instrument (EDI), and the Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI). These instruments are self-report questionnaires used to assess well-being, health, and academic achievement at a population level. The MDI, for example, asks children to report on their physical health and well-being, their social and emotional development, their connectedness to the neighborhood, adults, and peers, their perception of school, and their use of time outside of school. As an aspiring School Psychologist, I see the potential of these measures and their ability to inform us in multiple areas:
Research. Information from both EDI and MDI may be used to inform, evaluate, and develop theory. One obvious application would be to Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Systems theory, as it would allow us to observe the child’s development at different systems and spheres of the child’s life.
Practice, Intervention Development and Evaluation. Clinical Psychologists, School Psychologists, and pediatricians alike can all benefit from the valuable information their measures serve when working with specific populations. Along with other diagnostic instruments and tools, these measures can provide meaningful data behind what aspects of the child’s environment are most seriously impacting their development. Furthermore, this can allow for appropriate intervention delivery and evaluation, depending on what aspects of a specific population may be alarmingly at-risk.
Policy. Bridging research and practice together, this can provide policy makers with valuable information about the social world our youth find themselves in. They can appropriately work with different levels of the child to develop policies beneficial to the population as a whole: the child, the family, educators, school districts, etc.
Excitingly, HELP has already begun collecting these data at a provincial level. They have already mapped out measures of the EDI and MDI at multiple waves throughout neighborhoods. You can check this out here: http://earlylearning.ubc.ca/mdi/. Can you draw any conclusions based on these data at the different levels they provide?
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