2022
2023
TOEGEPASTE PSYCHOLOGIE
OPO: SCHOOL- AND FAMILY BASED
PREVENTIONS (ENGLISCH)
MORGANE DE LAET
,LESSON 1: INTRODUCTIONS
INFORMATION ABOUT THIS COURSE
1. Goals
At the end of this course the student can:
1) Define and explain concepts from the course
2) Provide the following aspects for the discussed behavioral and emotional problems and
types of well-being: Description, determinants, “what works” in prevention, and examples
of methods/interventions
3) Explain the necessary steps to choose a suitable intervention and implement and evaluate
the intervention
4) Apply these necessary steps to new examples (cases)
You can find this course information on Canvas.
2. Content of the course
1) Introductory course: definitions and theoretical framework
2) Prevention of substance abuse. Including necessary steps to analyze the problem
3) Prevention of behavioral problems. Including necessary steps to select a suitable
intervention
4) Prevention of school absenteeism and early school leaving. Including necessary steps to
implement an intervention
5) Prevention of internalizing problems. Including necessary steps to evaluate the effect of an
intervention
6) Prevention of screen addiction. Including necessary steps to evaluate the implementation of
the intervention
7) Prevention of radicalization
3. Exam information
It’s a written examen during the exam period in January. The questions will be asked in English,
but you can answer in English or in Dutch. The questions will be about:
- Knowledge
- Insights
- Ability to transfer content to new cases
4. Learning material
1) Powerpoint presentations (“Topics” on Canvas)
- All info on the prevention of each problem
- All info on the theoretical framework discussed through the course
2) Two articles (“Mandatory literature” on Canvas)
- Durlak, J. A., & DuPre, E. P. (2008). Implementation matters: A review of research on
the influence of implementation on program outcomes and the factors affecting
implementation. American journal of community psychology, 41(3-4), 327-350.
- Veerman, J. W., & van Yperen, T. A. (2007). Degrees of freedom and degrees of
certainty: A developmental model for the establishment of evidence-based youth care.
Evaluation and program planning, 30(2), 212-221.
3) Also “optional literature” on Canvas
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,THEORETICAL PRINCIPALS AND FRAMEWORK
1. Definition
Prevention = Stopping a problem from ever occurring.
But prevention is much more than that. It’s also about:
- Delaying the onset of a problem behaviour, especially for those at-risk for the problem.
- Reducing the impact of a problem behaviour.
- Strengthening knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors that promote emotional and physical
well-being
- Promoting institutional, community, and government policies that further physical, social,
and emotional well-being of the larger community
When we look at the number of financial resources that are used in prevention, we see that
less than 3% of the financial recourses are used for prevention. Al the other financial resources
go to healthcare en treatment. So, we see that our healthcare people are more focused on
treating and reacting when there’s a problem instead of preventing it from happening. But
prevention is very important.
2. Why? Why devote time and energy in prevention? (advantages)
1) It’s effective.
First, it had been demonstrated that prevention is very affective. It is a defective way to
reduce psychological distress and enhance human functioning.
2) Prevention costs less
It reduces the costs of mental health care. For example: Implementing a prevention
program to focus on social skills in school, is less expensive than paying for therapy for
children who have developed low self-esteem, depression….
3) Prevention has a positive impact on the course
Early and focused preventive interventions can limit the length and severity of symptoms
and enhance functioning.
4) Prevention has a positive focus
Prevention is focused on strengths and competencies.
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,3. What does prevention look like?
Examples of sort of prevention we are being exposed to:
- BOB campaign
- Suicide prevention
- Pictures on cigarettes
- Mental health at Thomas more
- Drinking and driving
- Sex education
3.1. Different types of prevention
Preventive methods = Ways trough wich you can target a certain problem, or
promote a certain type of wellbeing.
1) Giving information, warnings, advice, and other preventive methods
- Campaigns, websites… (BOB, Sensoa, 1813, Zelfmoordlijn…)
- Political actions (No smoking zones, pictures on cigarettes, messages on beer…)
- Techniques (Rewarding: chart in classes to promote positive behaviour)
2) Prevention programs (interventions)
These are integrated sets of prevention activities. They are put togheter and they
make up a specific protocol that should be followed.
3) Multilevel prevention policy
There are a lot of preventive methods or activities togheter with prevention programs
or interventions. These are all put into place to prevent a certain problem.
4. Categorization
4.1. Categorization by Caplan (1964)
The oldest categorization is the categorization made by Caplan. He made a distinction
between primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention.
Primary prevention = Preventing a problem before it occurs by focusing on de risk
and protective factors.
Secondary prevention = Screening and trying to find out who’s at risk, to then
promptly intervening so the problem doesn’t get worse.
Tertiary prevention = Putted to place after a mental health disorder has developed.
Focusses on promoting recovery and preventing further
complications.
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,4.2. Categorization by Gordon (1987) (!)
The categorization we will be using, is the one from Gordon. This one is officially adopted
by the institute of medicine. Here we make a distinction between universal, selective, and
indicated prevention. The difference between Gordon and Caplan, is that Caplan was
focusing on the problem that they were trying to prevent, Gordon is focusing on who is
targeted.
Universal prevention = Focused on everybody of a certain population. Everybody
gets the same treatments.
Selective prevention = They target those people who have a higher risk to develop a
certain problem.
Indicated prevention = They target people who already displays symptoms of the
problems. They try to prevent the worse and further
development of the problem.
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,4.3. Categorization by de Roos & van Dinther (2011)
Another sort of categorization is the one from de Roos and van Dinther. They make 4
distinctions between prevention programs.
1) Between collective prevention and individual prevention
Collective preventions are preventions that are focused on a group of people
(prevention in a classroom). Individual prevention is focused on an individual (most
tertiary preventions are individual preventions).
2) Between general prevention and specific prevention
General prevention focusses on enhancing wellbeing in general (program that
promotes social skills). It tries to strengthen people. A specific prevention targets a
specific problem (anti-drug prevention).
3) Between situational prevention and person-oriented prevention
Situational prevention is focused on the environment, surrounded your target
population (not placing stores where you can buy alcohol near schools). Person-
oriented prevention is targeting de target population, trying to change risk factors
within the person.
4) Between indirect prevention and direct prevention
Indirect prevention is prevention that work through mediators. They do not focus on
the target population (targeting the parents about behaviour problems of children).
Direct prevention doesn’t work through mediator but are focused on the target self.
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,4.4. Categorization by Deklerck & Depuydt (2001) and Deklerck (2011) (!)
The prevention pyramid makes
a distinction between different
preventive activities within
such a multilevel prevention
policy. The original pyramid is a
bit chaotic, so we tried to
make it more uncluttered. We
have a multilevel prevention
policy that is build up by using
different preventive activities
on different levels. It is mostly
used in school, to explain the
different activities of the policy
within a school.
1) Level 0: Focus society = Not in the school, but it’s about the
environment around the school. It concerns
law and regulation, but also actions to change
attitudes (Belgian law against spreading
naked pictures of children…)
2) Level 1: Focus on school culture = This is within the school and is focused on the
= focus on well-being school culture. This is to stimulate de positive
school climate. A positive school climate with
children feeling safe and teachers feeling
good, will decrease the chance of developing
problems (Team building for teachers,
parental involvement…)
3) Level 2: General prevention = This level is focused on strengthening de
= focus on well-being people within the school. They want to make
de person stronger and strengthen the
protective factors within the person
(Teaching social skills, increasing empathy,
handling peer pressure…)
4) Level 3: Specific prevention = These preventing activities are focused on
= focus on problem diminishing the risk, specifically for the
problem (Rules and guidelines, teach
teachers to detect bullying…)
5) Level 4: Curative measures = This are measures that you put into place to
= focus on problem act out when you are confronted with the
problem (bully hotline, talking to the bully
and the victim, engage parents…)
An anti-bullying policy is ideally set up in this way, in these levels. Within schools you have
a lot of activities that they do to prevent bullying, but these are all individualized activities
that don’t have any effects on their own. In a policy, where you put everything togheter,
the chances are bigger to prevent bullying.
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,5. Importance of research and theory
We all know these packages. Cigarette
compagnies are obliged to put photos on
their packaging about the negative effect of
smoking. Do you think this is preventive to
stop people from smoking?
The pictures try to inform you about the negative effects of smoking. When you ask the people
who smoke what the consequences of smoking van be, they all know the answers. This means
that the knowledge about this doesn’t make people stop smoking.
First, the photo’s make you less sensitive to it when you see them often. People who smoke
daily, won’t be as “chocked” to see those pictures as people who don’t smoke. But second,
especially young people, they don’t believe that this will happen to them. This is called personal
legend.
Personal legend = Thinking negative things will happen to other people and not to you.
The fault that is made here, is that they do not focus on the correct risk and protective factors of
smoking. Knowledge on the negative effects of smoking is not a risk or protective factor. We all
know the negative effect of smoking, but we still smoke. It is crucial to use effective methods
because scaring people out of something won’t work because they don’t believe it will ever
happen to them. Such as exposing the people to these pictures every time, it won’t work. People
get used to it and it doesn’t have an effect anymore.
So, to prevent problems and enhance well-being:
1) One should target those factors that contribute to the development of problems (risk and
protective factors)
2) Using effective methods
To know what these risk and protective factors are, and wich methods are the most effective,
we need research and theory.
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,6. Theoretical framework (step by step guideline on canvas!)
How would you start when asked to find and implement a prevention program for a specific
problem, for example, the school wants to promote healthy sexual behaviour. How do you
start? Interview, education, research, analyse the problem/ situation, presentation, external
experts…
It’s very important to do certain thing in a specific order. We have 4 different steps.
First, we analyse the question/problem/need…. We want to describe the
given problem.
ANALYZE - What is the nature of the problem?
- What is the etiology of the problem?
Then we’re going to select an intervention. We want to know the
SELECT characteristics of the intervention.
- Goodness of fit: Target population, goals, change theory, method…
After selecting we will implement an intervention. We analyzed the
IMPLEMENT problem and chose an intervention that fits. Now we must implement it.
- Factors facilitating & inhibiting good implementation
- Advise and good practices on how to use facilitating factors to your
advantage & how to overcome inhibiting factors.
After all this, we will evaluate the intervention.
EVALUATE - Effect evaluation: Are the goals achieved?
- Process evaluation: Is the program implemented well?
7. Pitfalls
You can make a lot of mistakes; we call them pitfalls. Some examples:
- Intervention focusses on wrong determinant
- Intervention does not fit (target population, goal you want to achieve…)
- Trouble implementing the intervention
- Intervention is not effective
- …
8. Focus on prevention at school and at home
The focus of this course will be:
1) What you can do as psychological consultants within the school and/or pedagogical context?
2) Prevention setting (school, home and peer context)
Our focus will mostly be on the prevention in school, home and peer context because of two
reasons:
- It makes it possible to focus on prevention early in life, wich is very effective
- Young people spend a substantial amount of time in these contexts. This makes them
susceptible to influences of these contexts. But it will make them more easily accessible for
prevention.
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, 9. Prevention landscape in Flanders
We have many organizations in Flanders that make interventions, that help with the
implementation, that support schools and parents…. Most of them use (effective) preventive
methods. But they use less implementation of existing (empirically supported) interventions.
9.1. Preventive care in Flanders (Preventiedecreet 2003)
1) Partner organizations (sponsored by the Flemish government)
These are expert organizations. They have expertise in a specific topic:
- Vlaams Instituut voor Gezond Leven = Focus on healthy behaviour in general.
- Vereniging voor Alcohol en Drugs (VAD) = Focus on drug and alcohol abuse
- Sensoa = Focus on sexual behaviour
- Eetexpert = Focus on eating behaviour
- Kind en Gezin = Focus on parenting and education
- Vlaams Instituut Voor Suïcidepreventie = Focus on suicide
- Vlaams Wetenschappelijke Vereniging voor Jeugsgezondheidszorg = Focus on
healthy social and physical development of children
These expertise centers have different tasks, such as:
- Support Logo’s, field-organizations, individual care givers and others
- Inform, give advice and develop interventions
- Support the implementations of these interventions and us
2) Local Health Support = Logo’s (sponsored by the Flemish government)
These Logos are responsible for communication the information from these expert
organizations.
They also have different sorts of tasks, such as:
- Communicate preventive activities and interventions from Flemish government
- Follow up on the progress of the health goals 2025
3) Field Organizations
They are focused on end users in different societal sectors, such as education, health
and well-being, culture, work and local administrations. They do not work with
children and youth, but they work with intermedial groups such as teachers and
sports trainers. For example:
- Preventiediensten van CGG’s = Focus on healthcare
- De Sleutel = Focus on drug and alcohol abuse
They have different sorts of tasks, such as:
- Inform, document and advise
- Develop methods and interventions for target population
- Support implementation
4) Individual care givers in the field
They do the same as the field organizations, but they aren’t always sponsored by the
Flemish government. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t.
It’s not clear who does what because there are so many organizations. Some get sponsored,
others don’t, and this makes it very difficult to find your way as organization. There is also little
research on the effectiveness in Flanders, and outside of the USA in general. There is way too
little financial support, and thus too little support in general.
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