“I didn’t know what I didn’t know!”: Improving confidence of postgraduate psychology students to support children with language difficulties through a targeted education intervention

Abstract

Psychology students receive little content related to supporting mental health among children with language difficulties (language difficulties), which contributes to low confidence to support this population. Postgraduate psychology students (n = 96) received an education intervention (one lecture and one tutorial) on links between language and mental health difficulties and implications for practice. Knowledge, experience, and confidence were explored via pre- and post-surveys and follow-up interviews. Over 40% of students reported low levels of knowledge, education, and confidence to support people with language difficulties. Confidence significantly increased following the education intervention (p < .001). Interview data provide preliminary evidence of the effectiveness of the education intervention in enhancing awareness of links between language difficulties and mental health and the value of collaboration between psychology and speech-language pathology (SLP). These findings support the involvement of SLPs in psychology training; however, both disciplines must continue to advocate for ongoing collaborative learning opportunities to promote positive outcomes for children with language difficulties.

Keywords:

• mental health
• developmental language disorder
• dyslexia
• education
• psychology
• speech-language pathology

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to acknowledge, Associate Professor Trevor Mazzuchelli, who was instrumental in facilitating the education intervention.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Due to an administrative error, we were only able to conduct within-subjects comparisons pre- and post-content on a subset of participants (n = 16). The pattern of results was identical to the pattern in the full sample.

Additional information

Funding

Mark Boyes is supported by the National Health and Medical Research Council, Australia (Investigator Grant 1173043). This project was funded by Curtin School of Allied Health, Western Australia.