SCoRE | How Prevention Benefits Schools

The case for SCoRE

Hear what researchers, college and university administrators, and LEAD Pittsburgh affiliates have to say about the need for resilience education and SCoRE.

How Prevention Benefits Schools

Posted on September 21, 2011

Shawn Brooks (bio) advocates resiliency training as a proactive approach to student health.

I think that there is a real benefit to adding a resilience class into a curriculum at a college or a university. Once again, I think that it's a question of being proactive and helping to teach students how to navigate the real world. So, it's not just a question of ensuring that we have enough counselors at the counseling center or doing appropriate follow-up as student conduct is concerned or from the student health center perspective. I think that being proactive really is the key to moving us forward. I think the amount of resources that we commit to responding to students who are in crisis is phenomenal and it continues to grow, and if we keep moving along this kind of trajectory, I think it's really going to unfairly and unjustly tax our system.

I think that there will become a point of diminishing returns that we're probably not going to ever be able to provide enough resources to respond appropriately to everyone. So I think that by doing work preventively on the front end, once again, will keep students from getting in problems and crisis.

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Excerpted from interview with contributor in May 2011.

More About "Benefits to Schools"

More From Shawn Brooks (bio)

Why Should Colleges Teach Resiliency?

What the experts say

"Even for the brightest, best-adjusted young person the transition from high school to college is a very, very challenging one.… All young people entering college could benefit from focusing on what their strengths are and how to protect themselves in the face of the stresses that will inevitably come with the transition to college life.… The lessons that one learns in developing a kind of resilience outlook are lessons that will serve one for the rest of one's life."

Ellen Frank, PhD
Professor, Department of Psychiatry
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

"This program provides students with a skill set that either initiates them into resilience or adds to their strengths, and resilience will help them throughout the entire course of their lives."

Toni Macpherson, MEd
Executive Director
LEAD Pittsburgh

"If resilience education were incorporated early into college life, it would benefit campuses in many ways, because they would avoid a certain amount of increased individual difficulties with students, and that's wear and tear on the entire college campus.… There is no doubt in my mind that having a set of coping and resilience skills is just as important as whether I get an A or a B in a particular course."

David J. Kupfer, MD
Professor, Department of Psychiatry
University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine

"Learning to be resilient is imperative in life; I don't know how you can go through life as well without it.… I think students will take away fewer scars of failure, rejection, and anxiety because they’ll know how to do things they might not have known had they not taken a course in resilience."

Sheila R. Fine
Chair, Board of Directors, and Principal Founder
LEAD Pittsburgh