Developing student wellbeing and resilience using a group process

Emotional wellbeing and resilient behaviour is of fundamental importance and inhibited by the well documented prevalence of relational aggression amongst adolescent girls in schools. This often subtle and insidious form of aggression damages relationships within peer groups either by excluding and isolating girls from the group or by damaging their reputation. Research is showing that the outcome of relational aggression can be loss of self-esteem, school avoidance or more serious psychological damage leading to mental illness (Rigby, 2005; Owens et al., 2000). Within a school setting valuable learning time is taken up dealing with the disputes of relational aggression. The aim of this research was to use group processes to provide some psycho-education to name the conflict that exists and to examine the processes occurring. A girl’s friendship group of 12 members was invited to take part in four sessions of group work run by school counsellors to examine the nature of the conflict arising in their group and to learn better ways of dealing with this. Positive psychology research indicates that interventions can be successful when the strengths of individuals are articulated and used within a group process (Seligman & Czikszentmihalyi, 2000). The group facilitated open discussion with clear articulation of the problems each experiences, together with attempts to deal with these problems. The process of developing pro-social skills, empathy and effective conflict resolution skills has resulted in greater emotional literacy of the girls in this group and the girls report being empowered to deal with conflict.