The master's thesis discusses the recognition of the psychosocial distress of young people and preventive action with the help of creative media through the online program “Moja moč”. In the theoretical part, I first define the psychosocial distress of young people. I continue with the presentation of preventive action in elementary schools. In the following, I define emotional intelligence and its importance in overcoming the distress of young people. In the theoretical part, I present the creative media that you can use as a tool to prevent and reduce distress and that support personal growth and development. In conclusion of the theoretical part, I define online resources to help young people, which can be a very effective tool for protecting mental health despite some harmful traps.
In the empirical part, I researched the importance of a preventive online program for students of the last triad of elementary school, through which I made them aware of psychosocial distress and coping strategies and encouraged the development of competencies to cope with distress through creative activities. By the research, I wanted to contribute to the visibility of the psychosocial distress faced by young people of the selected age in the research and their support needs. I used the descriptive and causal experimental research methods and did action research in which I combined the quantitative and qualitative approaches. The sample is intentional. I included students from the last triad of four Slovenian elementary schools of which two were from urban and two from non-urban environments. I designed and tested an innovative online program called “Moja moč”, which included a survey for young people and guidelines for working with creative media of painting and drawing, photography, and creative writing.
The results show that the most common psychosocial distress of the surveyed young people is the concern about the school, lack of motivation for school, and general sad feelings, as well as the loss of will, satisfaction, and interest in activities. The most common strategies they use to help themselves are listening to music, walking in nature, doing sports or recreation, and conversing with a friend. They need the most support in motivating for school work. I found that the online educational program “Moja moč” should be studied further in more detail and over a longer period. It would be necessary to work with several students, parents, teachers, and school counselors and co-create a program with all stakeholders that would be as useful as possible to prevent psychosocial distress of young people and to support young people in the face of existing psychosocial distress. In this action research, I indicated the beginning of an innovative online practice of preventive action for young people. I believe that the preventive online educational program has many possibilities for further research and use. In the future (when even greater digitalization is envisaged), I believe that it will be necessary to take a step towards modernizing and diversifying the offers in the field of online resources for helping young people. The results show that the need in this area is really great.
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