Preschool lessons in emotional skills linked to better mental health nearly 20 years later

A study of children from low-income families found that a brief preschool programme was associated with fewer depressive symptoms, less loneliness and higher life satisfaction in early adulthood.

A long-running study of a preschool programme in Pennsylvania suggests that lessons in managing frustration, recognising emotions and resolving conflicts can shape mental health well into adulthood, according to researchers at Penn State and the journal American Psychologist.

The study followed 356 children from low-income families across 44 Head Start classrooms and compared those who received the Research-based, Developmentally Informed, or REDI, curriculum with peers in standard preschool classes. The intervention added short, twice-weekly lessons built around puppets, stories and role-play, teaching children friendship skills, emotional understanding, problem-solving and language development.

Nearly two decades later, researchers reached 263 of the original participants when they were aged 21 and 22. Young adults who had taken part in REDI reported fewer symptoms of depression, less loneliness, stronger empathy and higher life satisfaction than those who had not received the programme. They also recorded more than 20 additional healthy days each year, based on a measure of how often physical or mental health interfered with work or self-care.

Karen Bierman, the Penn State psychologist who led the work, said the findings add to a broad body of evidence showing that support in early childhood can have effects that last for years. The programme’s benefits were not limited to emotional health in the moment: Penn State has reported that earlier academic gains, such as vocabulary and letter recognition, faded over time, but the social and emotional advantages continued to build through stronger relationships with teachers and classmates.

The study also found that difficult early life circumstances still carried a heavy cost. Many of the children had faced serious hardship before preschool, including parental depression, an arrest in the family, frequent spanking or repeated moves. Those factors predicted worse adult outcomes overall, but the REDI programme still appeared to help, and in some cases the gains in empathy and sociability were even larger for children who had experienced more adversity.

Related work has pointed in the same direction. A 2020 report highlighted by the American Psychiatric Association said REDI participants showed fewer conduct problems, emotional symptoms and peer difficulties in adolescence, while a National Institute of Child Health and Human Development release described gains in executive functioning, including social and emotional development. Taken together, the research suggests that early social-emotional learning may offer benefits that last far beyond the preschool years, especially for children growing up under pressure.