The DREAM Program: Developing Resilience through Emotions, Attitudes, & Meaning – A Community-Based Program to Enhance Child Mental Health for Gifted Children and their Families

Abstract

Intellectually gifted children may be at risk for higher mental health concerns than non-gifted children. Specifically, their risk of being diagnosed with a mental illness is 30%, without appropriate support, in comparison to non-gifted children, whose risk is 20%. Therefore, it is imperative that gifted children receive accessible and appropriate resources that are tailored to their unique behavioral, social, and emotional needs. There is a gap in both resources and research examining the mental health of families of gifted children, and a need for further research and adequate interventions. To address this dearth, Armstrong (2018) developed the DREAM program for gifted children to develop resilience through emotions, attitudes, and meaning. Given the significant challenges associated with giftedness, this can potentially affect the whole family unit. Thus, an intervention to promote resilience within the whole family may be helpful. The goal of the current study is to assess the efficacy of the program in improving the meaning mindset and mental health of families through an online platform to determine if the program improved meaning mindset and internalized and externalized mental health symptoms, and if it was appropriate for gifted children and their families. To do so, the study used the Knowledge Translation Integrated (KTI) methodology, which was created to assess and integrate quantitative and qualitative data for credibility, acceptability, feasibility, and sustainability (Armstrong 2017; Armstrong et al., 2018). A comparison of pre and post-test results indicated that the meaning mindset of families appeared to improve significantly. Further, meaning mindset at post-test, which was likely fostered by the DREAM program, mediated the relationship between gifted challenges and mental illness symptoms. Regarding the appropriateness of the program, participants recommended restricting the age range to families with children between 7 and 9 years of age. Through the KTI approach, recommendations and validations were provided by participants. More research is needed, particularly with a larger sample including a lower socio-economic status and rural sample. This follow-on research would be important to shed more light on the credibility, acceptability, feasibility and sustainability of the program, while ensuring that the program appropriately adapts to the unique needs of participants.