Connection to Guidance

Summary

Connection to Guidance is the connection with a mentor, a trusted adult or person of guidance provides a protective bond that encourages help-seeking behaviors. This is a protective factor for the individual. Cohesive youth–adult networks may promote more help-seeking for students and for their friends with whom they share a common bond to a supportive adult.

Notes and references

Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry *: * (2019), Peter A. Wyman, Trevor A. Pickering, Anthony R. Pisani, et al.

Social networks provide the mechanisms for the diffusion of norms and practices and the context for peer group monitoring and support. Network characteristics influence the spread of many health behaviors.  By focusing on patterns of relationships, network methods can clarify the contexts in which relationships form and exert influence on others.

Cohesive youth–adult networks may promote more help-seeking for students and for their friends with whom they share a common bond to a supportive adult.

Maximizing protective bonds across school populations, increasing opportunities for group cohesion including integrated youth– adult networks, and promoting influence of youth with healthy coping.  Our findings suggest effective interventions will involve youth and adults.

NIMH

Wyman has led research (NIH, CDC funded) testing this approach, which disseminates skills for social health through youth peer networks.  The high-energy, interactive training improves student connectedness and coping norms, and protective effects spread school-wide including adult help for suicidal youth.  A study aggregating three RCTs (N=78 schools; 39,900 students) showed fewer suicide deaths in schools implementing this approach.  

Social Science & Medicine                     Social Science & Medicine 296 (2022) 114737

Wingman-Connect Program’s interactive training created more dynamic relationship networks. Airmen in W-CP groups made more changes in who they named as valued connections, even as the overall average number of valued connections increased.