Work in schools
Samaritans DEAL programme helps schools develop the skills that
young people aged 14-16 need to cope with life's challenges and
develop their emotional health and wellbeing.
The resources aim to help
students to develop an understanding of the meaning of the term
‘emotional health’ as it relates to them, and their
friends/family/peers. The lessons also seek to help students
to identify coping strategies for stressful or difficult situations
they may face, and to reflect on the positive and negative
consequences their choices could have.
Whole school emotional health
- one in five children have psychological problems
- one in 10 children have a clinically diagnosable mental
disorder
- over 60% of teenage boys don’t know what to do when someone
becomes emotional towards them
- over 40% of girls also don’t know how to react to someone who’s
upset
- over half of teenagers don’t know how to express their feelings
– they can only stick to the facts when they talk about their
problems
DEAL can be taught as part of a lesson on a range of subjects,
including English literature, drama, RE and geography. Samaritans
has developed DEAL so that emotional health is seen as relevant to
learning generally, rather than any one specific area of the
curriculum, reflecting the fact that emotional health-related
skills are important to all parts of life.
Resources
In this mp3 audio download, celebrity supporter Danny McNamara
of Embrace discusses how he dealt with emotional stress. Also
featuring Tonja Schmidt, Development Co-ordinator at Samaritans,
introducing DEAL, and Zia Forrai, a 17-year-old student.
Download
mp3 audio (3.8 Mb)
Lessons Plans |
National Curriculum
links | Results of the
pilot | Give feedback
on DEAL
- The DEAL programme development was developed by teachers and
Samaritans volunteers and based on research with over 1,000 young
people.
- 35 different specialist organisations in education, health,
voluntary and private sectors helped produce the
programme.