According to the World Health Organization (WHO), good mental health is ‘a state in which learners realise their own abilities, can cope with normal life stressors, learn well, build meaningful relationships and are able to contribute to their community’ [1].
WHO also states that for children and young people to experience good mental health, they need to develop ‘a positive sense of identity, the ability to manage thoughts, emotions, as well as to build social relationships, and the aptitude to learn and to acquire an education, ultimately enabling their full active participation in society’.[2]
These descriptions of good mental health challenge us to move beyond limited distinctions (simply the absence of mental health difficulties or disorders) to embrace a wider definition. Namely: a positive state of wellbeing that it is experienced when children and young people can take part in a variety of activities that are meaningful, important and support their development.
Let’s consider the necessary skills, knowledge and understanding that children and young people need in order to access these affirming activities — which include learning, playing, making friends and contributing to their school communities — and navigate challenges appropriate to their stage of development.
For example, children and young people need to be able to consider alternative perspectives; cooperate and compromise; manage distractions, unhelpful thoughts and strong or uncomfortable emotions; and recognise when it is important to seek support. Those who can navigate challenges well are considered to have high mental health strengths[3].
Researchers have found that children and young people with high mental health strengths, such as self-regulation and social competence, experience a wide range of positive outcomes. For instance, they are less likely to:
Children and young people with high mental health strengths are also more likely to experience better physical health, cognitive development and high life satisfaction, among other positive outcomes [3, 6, 7]
But can mental health strengths be fostered through PSHE education?
It is now well-established that universal school programmes can both reduce mental health difficulties and promote mental health strengths [8, 9, 10]. For instance, a meta-analysis of 213 studies involving 270,034 children and young found that universal school programmes that aimed to promote mental health strengths significantly improved social and emotional skills, promoted prosocial behaviour and reduced disruptive behaviour and emotional distress [9].
Similar findings have been reported in a more recent systematic review and meta-analysis of 424 studies involving 575,361 children and young people [10]. Both studies found that universal school programmes that were sequenced, active, focused and explicit (SAFE) were more effective than programmes lacking these components.
Sources: Durlak et al., 2011, p. 410; see also Education Endowment Foundation, 2021, p. 26
Foundations for Wellbeing is the PSHE Association’s mental health and wellbeing PSHE education curriculum for 4- to 11-year-olds and covers statutory RSHE requirements for schools to teach about mental health. Foundations for Wellbeing supports pupils to develop mental health strengths, and is informed by the neurodevelopmental theory of mental health and wellbeing capacities (NDeTeC) [11]. This is a ‘big’ theory, in the sense that integrates a wide range of other mental health and wellbeing-related concepts into two skills-based capacities, which are malleable and can therefore be nurtured: the ‘self-regulation capacity’ and ‘self-world capacity’.
Put simply, the self-regulation capacity underpins our ability to manage our attention, thoughts, behaviour and emotions in support of our mental health and personally meaningful goals.
Personally meaningful goals can include goals such as the goals to be kind, considerate, patient and able to manage strong emotions (e.g., anger or excitement), as well as more ‘traditional’ goals, such as the goal to learn a specific skill, create something (e.g., a painting) or perform well at a task (e.g., a school performance).
The self-world capacity refers to our sense of self as:
You are likely already familiar with many of the concepts that the NDeTeC integrates, such as emotional literacy, emotion regulation, empathy, compassion, optimism, hope, prosociality, awe, gratitude, problem solving, reappraisal and cognitive flexibility.
Part of what makes NDeTeC unique is that it brings these disparate concepts together and organises them, providing a roadmap — or framework — for their application to developmentally sequenced mental health education lessons.
Looking back at the definitions of mental health provided by the WHO, the self-regulation capacity is especially relevant to managing ‘thoughts, emotions’ and ‘normal life stressors’, while the self-world capacity is especially relevant to developing a ‘positive sense of identity’.
Together, these skills-based capacities support pupils to ‘build social relationships’, ‘learn well’, and ‘realise their […] abilities’ – helping them to lead happy, healthy and fulfilling lives. With this in mind, we might like to think of them as ‘root systems’ that need to be nourished and attentively nurtured — just as the roots of a tree need to be so that it can grow strong and resilient to unpredictable or challenging circumstances [11].
Foundations for Wellbeing promotes elements of the self-world capacity across its 35 lessons and many of the activities to extend and embed learning, but it is also organised around specific aspects of the self-regulation capacity.
This enables self-regulation — a core mental health strength [3] — to be scaffolded within and across year groups, allowing key concepts, skills and strategies to be revisited, reinforced and iteratively built on, so that pupils can consolidate, expand and apply their learning, and use skills and self-regulation strategies more autonomously and effectively over time.
Foundations for Wellbeing uses a series of relatable stories and characters — who pupils meet each year and navigate developmentally appropriate, relevant and relatable challenges with as they grow up — to bring this learning to life, and give pupils the opportunity to develop mental health strengths.
All of this means Foundations for Wellbeing is well placed (as part of a your wider, developmental PSHE education/RSHE curriculum, and a whole school approach to promoting mental health) to make a meaningful contribution towards supporting and improving children and young people’s mental health, both now and in the future.
It may even help to create kinder, calmer and more focused classrooms.
[1] World Health Organization (2023). How school systems can improve mental health and wellbeing: topic brief: mental health. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240064751
[2] World Health Organization. (2021). Comprehensive mental health action plan 2013-2030. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240031029
[3] Hope, S., Rougeaux, E., Deighton, J., Law, C., & Pearce, A. (2019). Associations between mental health competence and indicators of physical health and cognitive development in eleven year olds: Findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. BMC Public Health, 19, 1461.
[4] O’Connor, M., Olsson, C. A., Lange, K., Downes, M., Moreno-Betancur, M., Mundy, L., Viner, R. M., Goldfeld, S., Patton, G., Sawyer, S., & Hope, S. (2025). Progressing “positive epidemiology”: A cross-national analysis of adolescents’ positive mental health and outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic. Epidemiology, 36(1), 28-39.
[5] Pearce, A., Rougeaux, E., Deighton, J., Viner, R. M., Law, C., & Hope, S. (2021). Can mental health competence reduce the higher risk of smoking initiation among teenagers with parents who smoke? European Journal of Public Health, 31(4), 756-763.
[6] Rougeaux, E., Hope, S., Viner, R. M., Deighton, J., Law, C., & Pearce, A. (2020). Is mental health competence in childhood associated with health risk behaviors in adolescence? Findings from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. Journal of Adolescent Health, 67(5), 677-684.
[7] Robson, D. A., Allen, M. S., & Howard, S. J. (2020). Self-regulation in childhood as a predictor of future outcomes: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, 146(4), 324-354.
[8] Hayes, D., Deniz, E., Nisbet, K., Thompson, A., March, A., Mason, C., Santos, J., Mansfield, R., Ashworth, E., Moltrect, B., Liverpool, S., Merrick, H., Boehnke, J., Humphrey, N., Stallard, P., Patalay, P., & Deighton, J. (2025). Universal, school-based, interventions to improve emotional outcomes in children and young people: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Frontiers in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 4, 1526840.
[9] Durlak, J. A., Weissberg, R. P., Dymnicki, A. B., Taylor, R. D., & Schellinger, K. B. (2011). The impact of enhancing students’ social and emotional learning: A meta-analysis of school-based universal interventions. Child Development, 82(1), 405-432.
[10] Cipriano, C., Strambler, M. J., Naples, L. H., Ha, C., Kirk, M., Wood, M., Sehgal, K., Zieher, A. K., Eveleigh, A., McCarthy, M., Funaro, M., Ponnock, A., Chow, J. C., & Durlak, J. (2023). The state of evidence for social and emotional learning: A contemporary meta-analysis of universal school-based SEL interventions. Child Development, 94(5), 1181-1204.
[11] Dorjee, D. (2025). Making sense of mental health and wellbeing in primary schools: A practical, neuroscience-based guide. London: Routledge.