World Mental Health Day is celebrated every year on 10 October.
This year’s theme set by the World Federation of Mental Health is workplace mental health.
The theme highlights the importance of addressing mental health and wellbeing in the workplace, for the benefit of people, organisations, and communities.
Name: Luci Thompson
Bankfields Primary School
KS1 Teacher/Mental Health Lead
What does Mental Health mean to you?
To me, mental health means all the thoughts and feelings a person has and how this can impact our physical health, actions and interaction with the world around us.
Being a Mental Health Lead, how have you implemented good Mental Health practices in your role and school?
The first step for our school was to develop staff subject knowledge (appointing and training a designated mental health lead). In staff meetings, we discussed the importance of mental health education, what specifically mental health education would look like in our setting and how we could adapt the discussions we had for specific years groups and whole school settings. Next, we reviewed our PSHRE planning, school events, collective worship and assembly timetables to ensure mental health education was thoroughly covered. At the beginning of implementation, we had to work closely with the children to ensure they understood what we meant by the term mental health and all the things that encompasses. This process required working with the HeadStart team at first to deliver staff training and assemblies/children’s sessions and following this to ensure we embedded and maintained the focus and high expectations of the mental health curriculum we had established. As part of our work with the HeadStart team we have seen many children achieve their gold, silver and bronze HeadStart awards, becoming peer mentors and running mental health events/delivering mental health support in our school.
How has HeadStart impacted your pupils and school?
All our children understand what mental health is, how it can be impacted and how we can seek support for it. We have a children’s HeadStart team who act as peer mentors and run special mental health events in school. Our mental health lead is kept up to date with new research and offers, as well as being given the opportunity to meet regularly with other mental health leads through the HeadStart dop in and network sessions. Our teachers can discuss the needs of their children with the getting help team to ensure parents/pupils are correctly signposted to support beyond that which the school can offer. The HeadStart team support and drive the maintenance and improvement of mental health provision within our school by supporting our mental health lead.
What plans have you got for World Mental Health Day (10th October)
Our HeadStart team have planned a whole school assembly on wellbeing to deliver on this day, specifically focusing on the stressors that may occur for children in school and how they can cope with them. Our Monday Mindfulness session this week will focus on the ways of wellbeing and encourage pupils to think of personal stress relief techniques. The HeadStart team will also be running playtime/lunchtimes games and activities for the whole school which support they ways of wellbeing.
Published: October 8