Psychosocial and academic benefits of life-saving skills training among the secondary school adolescents in disaster-prone regions of Pakistan

In disaster-prone and resource-limited regions, adolescents are frequently exposed to climatic stressors that adversely affect their psychosocial well-being. School-based life-saving skills (LSS) training has emerged as a potentially valuable approach to improve psychosocial resilience among youth. This study evaluated the impact of LSS training program on psychosocial and academic outcomes among 252 secondary-school students in disaster-prone regions of southern Punjab. Intervention included structured training on cardiopulmonary resuscitation, bleeding control and other basic emergency responses. Four measuring tools including the scales for anxiety and depression, prosocial behaviour, social well-being and academic motivation were used to evaluate the impact of training, in a quasi pretest-posttest design with control and training group. Compared to the control group, the students who received LSS training showed lower anxiety and depression scores and higher prosocial behavior and social well-being scores at post-test assessment. Academic motivation also improved slightly in the training group, but the difference was not statistically significant. Gender-based analysis indicated that female students demonstrated comparatively greater gains in prosocial behaviour and social well-being than male students. Introducing structured emergency-response training in schools may offer a meaningful way to improve preparedness and psychosocial well-being among adolescents in vulnerable communities.