Developing Positive Attitudes for Life in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

Amodified version of Chapman's 'Thought Power' programme was used with regular Hong Kong secondary school students. A randomly selected group of students took part in a ten session 'Thought Power' programme organized in their school. The programme focused on stress identification, awareness of the role of thoughts in creating feelings, relaxation, awareness of automatic thoughts that are harmful and helpful, emotional versus physical pain, modification of automatic thoughts, problem-solving and alternative goal setting. Data on harmful thoughts, helpful thoughts, stress, general well-being and locus of control all revealed positive benefits for involvement in the 'Thought Power' programme. These benefits were evident in pre-test post-test comparisons for the project group, as well as in post-test comparisons between the project group and a comparison group. Several comparisons of each type were statistically significant. The findings suggest a role for such programmes in the regular school, and with regular (nonproblem) students.