The first life skills intervention to enhance well-being amongst university students in the Arab world: ‘Khotwa’ pilot study

Abstract

Although Life Skills programs showed to improve the psychological and physical wellbeing of individuals, little attention has been paid, worldwide and in the Arab countries in specific to implementing life skills intervention for university students. In this study, we tested the effectiveness of a life skills based health promotion intervention KHOTWA (STEP) in enhancing the wellbeing of university students in Lebanon, a country that faces economic and political instability. This is a quasi-experimental study, with pre and post-test, intervention-control design. Each group was formed of 78 participants studying in a private university in Lebanon. Mixed design was used to address the process and outcomes objectives of the intervention. The program was carried online due to COVID-19 pandemic. Significant differences were observed between the intervention and the control groups for life skills, dietary habits and mental health scores at the 3-month follow-up. For the intervention group, a significant increase was observed in the mean score of each of the following Life Skills subscales: self-care ( p = 0.001), work and study ( p = 0.013), career and education planning ( p = 0.011) and looking forward/goal settings ( p < 0.001). Students also achieved a healthier eating habit compared to those in the control group by decreasing their consumption of processed food. There was no significant effect in terms of body mass index ( p = 0.827). Also, there was a significant change in the mental health status ( p = 0.012) only in the intervention group as its mean score decreased after 3 months of the intervention implementation. This intervention enhances the mental health and promotes healthy habits leading consequently to a better quality of life and more productivity amongst university students. Therefore, such interventions should be replicated in other similar context to improve university students’ well-being.

Online group interventions for mental health promotion of college students: Integrative review

“…The results of this review indicate that online interventions are effective in promoting the mental health of college students (Maddah et al, 2021), as well as in reducing symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress (Ritvo et al, 2021). Studies such as those that comprised the corpus of this research are essential in the current pandemic scenario, given the urgent need for new strategies to promote mental health that meet the current needs of the student population.…”

“…Additionally, it can be a resource that helps to reduce psychopathological symptoms, especially those related to stress and anxiety, which were the most evidenced. Online group care has also proven to promote better mental health conditions, lifestyle habits, emotion management, and life satisfaction (Holtz et al, 2020; Maddah et al, 2021).…”

“…Regarding the limitations of the studies that comprised this review, we highlight the small sample sizes used in the interventions (Celia et al, 2021; Maddah et al, 2021), with a female predominance (Mayor‐Silva et al, 2021), and the participation of students from the same undergraduate course (Pang et al, 2021), which restricts the generalisability of the results. A number of the studies state that the pandemic made it difficult for students to be involved in the interventions, making a larger sample size unattainable (Celia et al, 2021), or that the intervention was initially planned in the face‐to‐face modality but had to be adjusted to an online model due to the pandemic (Maddah et al, 2021). Marenus et al (2021) also pointed out that changes in participants' self‐report scores may have been unduly influenced by the pandemic context.…”

“…Regarding the number of sessions in online group interventions, the minimum number reported was one session (e.g., Mayor-Silva et al, 2021;Pang et al, 2021) and the highest number was 20 sessions, across 10 weeks (e.g., Maddah et al, 2021). The most common configuration regarding the number of sessions was between four and eight, identified in 53.8% of the research presented (n = 7), such as in the studies by Ritvo et al (2021) In relation to the intervention analysis, 84.6% of the studies had a control group for comparison of the data collected (e.g., Krägeloh et al, 2019) and 92.3% used a pre-test and post-test design (e.g., Marenus et al, 2021).…”

“…Another group intervention identified was carried out by Maddah et al (2021), who provided 20 sessions over 10 weeks focusing on life skills-based health promotion. In the first session, participants were introduced to the programme and subsequent sessions addressed one life skill per session.…”