Balance through Mentors & Mindfulness

Recent data shows that around 20 per cent of children and young people aged from eight to 25 years have a probable mental disorder. According to Peakmind’s Observation, there was nearly a 65% increase in the number of students seeking counselling during last year in the age bracket of 14-20 years.

Schools can support children’s mental health effectively by introducing a mental health curriculum. This would not only enhance pupils’ awareness about various mental health issues, but also acquaint them with strategies to manage their own mental health issues.

Lack of investment in mental health services, coupled with growing demand, has left many children and young people with limited or no support.

Schools an obvious route

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• The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that mental health intervention in schools should be at four levels: the level one should be promotion of psychosocial competence which needs to be integrated in the school curriculum; the level two should focus on mental health education and should be part of the general health curriculum; the third level should have focus on those children who may need additional psychosocial interventions in school; and level four should be specifically for those children who are in need of professional help.
• With the proper resources to help, schools can offer swift support — especially when many children and young people experience delays in accessing external support, particularly from child and adolescent mental health services.

Need for smhp

School mental health programme (SMHP) has been recognised worldwide as key to improve the mental health and wellbeing of school going children. Unfortunately, in India, SMHP is badly neglected. There is no comprehensive SMHP that covers all schoolchildren (from rural and urban areas) across the country.

Pain points

The most common pain points that students have reached out to address are their inability to concentrate in studies, academic distress caused by performance pressure and test anxiety, fear of failure, lack of motivation, disturbed sleep, recurring negative thoughts; self-doubts, low energy followed by relationship issues and the general anxiety about their future.

With the proper resources to help, schools could offer swift support — especially when many children and young people experience delays in accessing external support, particularly from child and adolescent mental health services.

mental health through sports

A recent research involving 570 young people in schools across Cambridge explored the impact of a mental health curriculum delivered by a sports community trust and school partnership. The results of this study show a concrete path for mental well being of students in the schools.

Such sports curriculum should include sessions on stress, resilience, social media use and self-management strategies. Sports coaches can deliver these ‘lessons’. Sharing experiences with team mates can increase knowledge of strategies to cope with adversity and learning ways to help others with mental ill health.

mentors

Another strand of the whole school approach relates to working in partnership with children and young people to improve mental health. Older students can act as mentors in secondary schools, designing and delivering weekly physical activity sessions to younger students with social, emotional and mental health needs.

Experts who have conducted such experiments with high school students found that this improved levels of physical activity, which supported children’s mental health. The younger students gained coping skills and the programme also helped with their social skills, by leading to the development of supportive and trusting relationships between mentors and the students they were supporting.

Space and time

Nurture groups are used in some schools to support children with social, emotional and mental health needs. They can take place in nurture rooms, which tend to be more informal spaces than standard classrooms and provide positive environments for children to develop social and emotional literacy and regulation skills.

Nurture groups focus on helping children with their confidence, self-esteem and communication and with establishing positive relationships with others. These skills are explicitly taught and children have opportunities to practise the skills they learn.

A research study involving 384 children aged five and six demonstrated improvements in social, emotional and behavioural outcomes, although there was no evidence that nurture groups led to improvements in academic outcomes.

mending mind

Mindfulness is another practice that can take place in schools. The aim of mindfulness, as a practice, is to focus attention on the present rather than the past or the future, through guided participation. This could include focusing on breathing or a specific part of the body.

People can then use mindfulness by themselves to support their own mental health. A recent research with 216 secondary school students has demonstrated positive effects, including improvements in emotional regulation and emotional clarity as well as a reduction in perceived stress.

Combine mindfulness, exercise to boost mental health

Life changes which combine both physical activity and mindfulness are most effective at lifting mood and improving health and wellbeing. Both physical activity and mindfulness practice have well-established psychological benefits. However, by reviewing existing research studies, the positive effects can be increased when the two are combined, said researchers at the University of Bath in the UK. The findings suggest that mindfulness can help to unlock exercise by helping to motivate people to start in the first place, while overcoming minor pain, discomfort or feelings of failure when exercising gets hard. Mindfulness is an approach that can help us ‘train up’ the psychological strengths we need to exercise and be more in tune with our bodies, as well as make exercising more interesting and help us recognise its benefits. agencies