How School-Based Wellbeing Interventions, Socioeconomic Status, and Gender Impact Anxiety Development in Middle Childhood

Abstract

The current study examined whether delivering wellbeing interventions in schools impacted anxiety development in middle childhood. Schools have an important role to play in addressing children’s anxiety through daily practice in classrooms and by implementing specialist wellbeing interventions that support children’s coping. A nationally representative sample of Irish primary school children (N = 2313; 48.9% male) were surveyed when they were in second class (M age 8.09 years, SD = 0.39) and fourth class (M age 9.96 years, SD = 0.40) of primary school. Teachers reported on wellbeing interventions in schools. Key findings from moderation analyses suggest that family affluence and being female predicted a greater increase in anxiety development and that wellbeing interventions interacted with family affluence to reduce anxiety development for more affluent children. These findings can be used to strengthen the design and implementation of wellbeing interventions for a more efficacious approach to minimising children’s anxiety development.

Keywords

• anxiety
• low-income schools
• wellbeing interventions