Preventing teen violence

The Daily News, Wednesday, July 29, 1998

David Swick

Program from Halifax working in Winnipeg

HOW CAN WE help teenagers learn to deal with violent emotions? In Winnipeg, a group of 500 kids are less angry and more healthy, thanks to a program developed in Halifax.

"This program changes levels of self-confidence," says Dr. Wendy Josephson, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Winnipeg. "It changed what students know and what they are doing in relationships."

Six Winnipeg schools are using a three-year program developed by the Halifax group Men For Change. The curriculum, Healthy Relationships, runs in grades 7 through 9.

Many similar violence-prevention programs exist, but few have undergone a formal evaluation.

After two years, Dr. Josephson and her colleagues report that kids are:

• more inclined to recognize that swearing and intimidation are forms of abuse
• more likely to realize that TV exaggerates the amount of violence in real life
• more aware of the means advertisers use to sell their products
• more likely to recognize that other emotions usually underlie anger

Students taking the program, Josephson said, are learning both to make sense of media and resist peer pressure. Teaching Healthy Relationships to kids at the start of dating age, she said, appears to be the perfect time.

The Men For Change program is being used by public schools, women's shelters, and detention centres in every Canadian province and territory and in 30 states. The Winnipeg evaluation is being paid for by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada.