Resilience, stress and perceptions of school based support of young people managing diabetes in school

Resilience research has noted the instrumental role support from effective schools can have on increasing individual pupils' assets.

A systematic literature review was carried out to look at the effectiveness of school based Solution-Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) interventions used by a range of professionals in education, health and social care fields.

SFBT is a strengths based model which focuses on individuals' strengths and uses their available resources to contribute to making positive changes.

This review highlighted that SFBT interventions most improved academic, social skills and behavioural outcomes. The intervention gains at follow up were also maintained highlighting the longer term impact of SFBT interventions.

High levels of treatment fidelity, appropriate goals and measures of intervention change contributed to outcomes in studies deemed to show promising evidence for SFBT interventions use with at risk pupils.

SFBT fostered students' personal resources which contributed to characteristics that are identified as being necessary determinants for the psycho-social resilience in young people.

The empirical paper sought to investigate hypothesised relationships between personal resiliency (assets), school based support (protective factors) and perceived stress (risk factors) in students managing Type 1 Diabetes (T1D).

Students with chronic health conditions are a vulnerable group. A mixed methods study was employed to gain a more holistic view of student's experiences and to look specifically at those managing both 1D and school based tasks.

Questionnaires and semi structured interviews were used to explore student's personal resilience, perceived school based support and perceived stress.

A significant positive correlation was found between participant's personal resilience and perceived support.

While there was a significant negative correlation found between participant's personal resilience and perceived stress. Key themes were identified around the understanding of T1D for the individual and others, how support was viewed and balancing priorities (i.e. T1D, life and school).

The findings of this research have implications for students with T1D, peers, key adults supporting students and Educational Psychologists.