It is crucial to focus on the strengthening of adolescents’ resilience and well-being. This is because
adolescents are, with increasing age, more vulnerable for depressive symptoms and low intrinsic
academic motivation. During adolescence, the satisfaction of the psychological needs for autonomy,
relatedness, and competence, which serves as a catalyzer of growth, is increasingly threatened.
Therefore, from a prevention point of view, it is crucial that students acquire the skills to get their
basic needs met at an earlier age period. Although a large body of research demonstrates the
importance of a need-supportive context in early adolescents, they can also learn to craft their own
basic needs (need crafting) by seeking out activities, contexts, and relationships that increase
opportunities for need satisfaction. Building on an effective training (called LifeCraft) for late
adolescents, this project aims to develop and validate, for the first time, an effective, universal
training for early adolescents. Because early adolescents are still in elementary school and may
benefit more from classroom support, a ‘classic’ online LifeCraft condition will be experimentally
contrasted with both a control group and a LifeCraft condition with additional classroom support. The
condition with classroom support is expected to result in the most sustainable mental health
benefits.