Developing positive attitudes for life in the twenty-first century - The 'thought power' programme used with teenage students in Hong Kong

A modified version of Chapman's 'Thought Power' programme was used with reg ular Hong Kong secondary school students. A randomly selected group of stud ents took part in a ten session 'Thought Power' programme organized in thei r school. The programme focused on stress identification, awareness of the role of thoughts in creating feelings, relaxation, awareness of automatic t houghts that are harmful and helpful, emotional versus physical pain, modif ication of automatic thoughts, problem-solving and alternative goal setting . Data on harmful thoughts, helpful thoughts, stress, general well-being an d locus of control all revealed positive benefits for involvement in the 'T hought Power' programme. These benefits were evident in pre-test post-test comparisons for the project group, as well as in post-test comparisons betw een the project group and a comparison group. Several comparisons of each t ype were statistically significant. The findings suggest a role for such pr ogrammes in the regular school, and with regular (nonproblem) students.