Creating happier teens
A program developed in Queensland has been used in 13 countries to prevent teenage depression.
It is a long way from the infamous black township of Soweto in South Africa to modern classrooms in Brisbane, Amsterdam and Shanghai. But a program born partly from experiences in apartheid-era South Africa over 25 years ago is now helping teenagers across the world to become more resilient.
RAP (Resourceful Adolescent Program) has been developed by a team of researchers at the Queensland University of Technology’s Institute for Health and Biomedical Innovation under the directorship of Associate Professor Ian Shochet.
Administered by National Coordinator of Training and Program Development Astrid Wurfl, RAP teaches coping skills to teenagers, helps build harmonious relationships in families and helps make teenagers feel more connected to their schools.
In the early 1980s, husband and wife team Ian Shochet and Astrid Wurfl were young anti-apartheid activists in Johannesburg who felt the best way they could protest against the horror of state-sanctioned racism was to go and work in black townships. Ian gave up his free time to run parenting programs in El Dorado, a township outside Johannesburg, while Astrid worked as a speech pathologist in the over-crowded Soweto Hospital.
“In the black townships, the needs were so great and the resources were so few, you just had to learn to think creatively and be very resourceful,” Ian said.
The couple left South Africa in 1986 so Ian could do post doctoral work at the University of Rochester in New York. After stints at Charles Sturt University in Bathurst, New South Wales, and Griffith University in Brisbane, Ian joined QUT’s School of Psychology and Counselling in 2004.
Ian began developing RAP in 1996 and he and Astrid were able to call on their earlier experiences of working with resilient people whose lives were under great stress.
RAP has three components – RAP-A for adolescents, a school-based program for 12–15 year olds aimed at improving the coping skills of teenagers; RAP-P for parents, which targets family protective factors such as increasing harmony and preventing conflict; and RAP-T for teachers, aimed at assisting teachers to promote school connectedness.
“Our research shows that a lack of connection to their school puts adolescents at greater risk of depression than even a lack of attachment to their parents,” Ian said.
“Students who don’t have a sense of belonging to their school can have poor attendance, engage in risky health behaviour, have a drop in grades and may be in trouble for delinquency, all factors that go hand in hand with depression,” he said.
Astrid said RAP was designed to be useful to all teenagers and not just those at risk of depression.
“The programs aim to prevent the development of future problems by increasing the psychological resilience of teenagers and giving them coping skills to deal with the demands and competition in today’s society,” she said.
RAP is endorsed as an evidence-based program by the Australian Government and has received grants from the Queensland Health Promotion Council, the Commonwealth Department of Health and Human Services and other leading research organisations.
RAP workbooks have been translated into French, Dutch, Chinese, Vietnamese and Braille and the program has been used in all states and territories of Australia as well as in Canada, New Zealand, China, Netherlands, Mauritius, Germany, Serbia, Switzerland, Zimbabwe, Fiji, United Kingdom and Morocco. RAP-A and RAP-P also have adaptations to meet the specific needs of Indigenous communities. The Queensland Government contributed $22.5 million from the Smart State Research Facilities Fund towards the construction of the Institute for Health and Biomedical Innovation.
Website: http://www.rap.qut.edu.au
Last reviewed 23 July 2007
