Poster Session 4: Family Life Education

Presenters: Jeremy Kanter, Daniel Lannin, Luke Russell, Ani Yazedjian

Summary
How adolescents navigate romantic relationships strongly predicts their mental health. As a result, youth relationship education programs have been developed to teach youth skills to develop and maintain healthy romantic relationships. Understanding how relational experiences influence adolescent functioning during relationship education may be important, so practitioners can effectively tailor programming to meet the needs of diverse youth. Using a sample of adolescents, we examined how relational transitions during relationship education programs were related to adolescents' psychological distress. Results indicated that youth who were consistently partnered during programming reported increases in psychological distress, and qualitative data provided insight into the nature of this pattern. These results advance scholarship on best practices for relationship education programming.

Objectives
-- To examine how changes (or stability) in relationship status influence change in psychological functioning throughout a relationship education program.
-- To explore what issues youth report that may contribute to adverse mental health outcomes.
-- To provide tangible future directions to strengthen youth relationship education programs.

Subject Codes: mental health, dating, relationships
Population Codes: adolescence, dating, romantic partners
Method and Approach Codes: evaluation, applied research, interventions