Purpose
As the overall percentage of children, adolescents, and adults who develop mental/behavioral health disorders continues to increase, the focus of this interdisciplinary group within SMHILE is to promote a holistic approach to child and adolescent development for enhancing health, resilience, and well-being from a developmental perspective.
Holistic Health Education
Holistic development is understood as an emergent process — not as the sum of isolated skills and behaviors, but as a mutually reinforcing network of capacities that co-develop over time. A core theme is that the development of physical, cognitive, psychological, and social-emotional health are fundamentally interconnected, with sensorimotor experiences (e.g. movement and embodied learning) playing a crucial role in shaping the developing brain and self.
Holistic development may be further seen as an integrative process that nurtures the full spectrum of human well-being, including physical, mental, emotional, social, spiritual, and environmental attributes. It emphasizes the interconnection between individuals, communities, and the environment; and promotes equity, education, sustainability, and cultural relevance as essential pillars for personal and collective functioning.
Harmonic development is thus a process of inner growth where all aspects of the human being — physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual — become integrated in a state of balance, unity, and coherence.
Stodden, D. F., Pesce, C., Zarrett, N., Tomporowski, P., Ben-Soussan, T. D., Brian, A., … Weist, M. D. (2023). Holistic functioning from a developmental perspective: A new synthesis with a focus on multi-tiered system support structure. Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, 26(2), 343-361.
Mission
- Engage mental/behavioral health and education professionals, researchers, schools, and families to advocate for a more holistic approach for promoting health and well-being across the lifespan
- Provide mental/behavioral health and education researchers, school behavioral health and education professionals, schools, and families with current research and practical interventions to facilitate positive trajectories of health & well-being that will impact individuals’ long-term mental health
- Advocate for enhancement of holistic behavioral health strategies and practices through enhanced engagement of researchers, school administrators, and school mental/behavioral health professionals with families and communities
Current Projects
- Develop and continually enhance the network of researchers and practitioners to accomplish the mission of the SMHILE Holistic Health Alliance (H2A).
- Build academic teams to advance “best practices” via coalescing academic and professional/practitioner support to strengthen a supportive ecosystem
- Develop a public domain repository for holistic integration interventions and movement-centered pedagogies that integrate the dominant paradigms in education and public health
Who We Are
Leadership:
- Dr. David Stodden, University of South Carolina, US
- Dr. Caterina Pesce, University of Rome “Foro Italico,” Italy
- Dr. Rodrigo Antunes Lima, Institut de Recerca Sant Joan de Déu, Spain
- Dr. Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan, Research Institute for Neuroscience, Education and didactics (RINED) of Patrizio Paoletti Foundation for Development and Communication, Italy
- Rachel Kurtz, Durham University, United Kingdom
Affiliates:
- Jenna Rice, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
- Matthieu Lenoir, Ghent University, Belgium
- David Lubans, The University of Newcastle, Australia
- Amika Singh, Mulier Institute, Netherlands
- Spyridoula Vazou, Michigan State University, US
- Arja Sääkslahti, University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
- Tao Huang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
- Kara Palmer, University of Michigan, US
- Kathrine Nyvoll-Aadland, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway
- Eivind Aadland, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Norway
- Stuart Biddle, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
- Ineke Vergeer, University of Southern Queensland, Australia
- Sergio Montault, University of Valencia, Spain
- Isaac Estevan, University of Valencia, Spain
- Antonio De Fano, Pegaso University, Italy
- Mirko Schmidt, University of Bern, Switzerland
- Valentin Benzing, University of Bern, Switzerland
- Collin Webster, Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi, US
- Lars Bo Anderson, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (Emeritus), Denmark
- James Rudd, Norwegian School of Sport Sciences, Norway
H2A Events
March 2024 — Rome, Italy
March 2025 — Barcelona, Spain
