Creating a culture of mental health awareness in schools

Creating a culture of mental health awareness is important in any school. It supports staff and pupils to feel psychologically safe and helps them feel supported when they might be struggling with their mental health. In this blog post, Victoria Maitland helps you develop your school’s awareness culture.

Mental health challenges

The theme for this year’s World Mental Health Day was mental health in an unequal world. Challenges over the last 18 months have exposed and exacerbated further divides in wealth, living conditions and societal trust across the nation. Naturally, therefore, disparities in mental health issues are also prevalent.

Both primary and secondary schools are dealing with increases in stress, loneliness, anxiety, depression and panic attacks. NHS figures last confirmed that approximately one in eight young people from 5-19 have a diagnosable mental health disorder of some kind.

Much like our physical health, our mental health is not static. Some days we feel great, while others make us want to dive back under the duvet. Understanding and talking about this fluidity helps us see struggles as outside of our core personality.

Instead, it’s a transient state that changes for better or worse. If schools can teach that mental health ebbs and flows over time, it helps young people recognise the way they’re feeling and practise self-care.

A mental health spectrum

All people will carry some kind of mental health issue in their lifetimes and we each navigate a spectrum of feelings and reactions daily.

Let’s not forget, some stress is good. It’s a motivator. The kick we sometimes need to make changes in our life. It can help us perform better in sports, public speaking or get work done by providing a ‘get up and go’.

However, consistent low-level stress becomes less palatable, affecting our wellbeing and even manifesting as physical pain.

Being a young person is difficult anyway. It’s a treadmill of practising adulthood that speeds up as you hit those teenage years. Young people crave social acceptance whilst simultaneously experimenting with individualism and carving their own identity.

Emotions already run high and judgements or criticism can mean nothing one day and be the end of the world the next.

Identifying changes in mental health

Early identification of changes in mental health is key. Here are some signs to look out for:

• Difficulties in concentrating
• Changed focus in learning
• Staring out of the window, tiredness and low self-esteem.
• Behavioural changes
• Changes to social circle or self-enforced isolation

Teachers and support staff are ideally placed to deliver important life lessons in mental health awareness. By building rapport and encouraging students to develop their skills of empathy and understanding, we can foster a greater appreciation for our emotions and how we can react to things. Our FLIP-it Thinking workshop for pupils can help with this too.

Some schools have gone as far as having designated emotionally available adults to respond to problems regularly and as they arise.

Creating the right mental health environment

Children spend 190 days at school each year, so teachers and support staff are superbly positioned to support and recognise problems.

A supportive environment with open communication will guide the next steps to take - it’s certainly easier to respond in advance of problems arising. Try incorporating regular activities into your teaching week that are linked to a calm mind, e.g. meditation, yoga or mindfulness. Not only can these reduce stress levels, but they can also improve concentration in the classroom.

Give pupils opportunities to let you know how they are. It can be as simple as a one-word response to the register that can alert you to how students are feeling at the start of the day. If no one asks a person how they are, it’s unlikely they’ll open up spontaneously.

Teacher wellbeing is aligned to student wellbeing. By practising a positive approach to mental health, you can create a culture of emotional understanding. You can model strategies that work for you.

By creating the right environment, your school can develop and enhance its mental health awareness.

For further ideas and support around mental health, why not join us for our virtual conference in November - Our Big Chat about thinking outside the tick box?