May is Mental Health Awareness Month!
Mental Health Awareness Month was created to help bring awareness to the impact that our mental health can have on our physical, emotional, and mental well-being. Mental wellness is so important to our overall health, so having a month to bring awareness to mental health resources and tools is a great thing for all of us to participate in!
Millions of people worldwide live with a mental illness, but so many never seek treatment. Mental Health Awareness Month opens up the conversation and helps to break the stigma around mental health. This helps more people to feel comfortable discussing their mental health and more people feel safe seeking help.
Mental health has a great impact on the overall health of kids and adults, and maintaining mental wellness is important at every stage of life. By providing people with the tools to maintain mental wellness and the resources to seek professional help when they feel that they need it – this helps individuals to start treating issues earlier and can help to prevent more severe and lasting problems.
In Rock In Prevention’s online curriculum, Rock Digi, we have created a curriculum called “Mental Health, SEL, and Substance Abuse Prevention” for grades 7-12. In this curriculum, we provide students with some basic tools to maintain mental wellness as well as resources for help when students are struggling with their mental health.
Some basic tools to use to maintain positive mental health or mental wellness that are identified in this Rock Digi curriculum include:
- Connecting with others, such as friends, trusted adults, school counselors, teachers, coaches, or family members.
- Staying positive and practicing gratitude
- Meditating
- Being physically active
- Being of service to others, such as volunteering, being a mentor, cleaning up trash in your community, recycling, or helping a friend with a project.
- Getting enough sleep
- Developing coping skills, such as processing the issue and finding solutions, breathing exercises, going for a walk, listening to music, talking with friends, or journaling.
- Getting professional help if you need it
We also wanted to help students to identify who can help them to find a mental health professional. In this curriculum, we provide students with a list of adults for students to choose from that could potentially help them to find a mental health professional when they feel they need help.
Some people that can provide support and help them to find a mental health professional include:
- Trusted Adult
- Teacher
- School Counselor
- School Psychologist
- Principal
- School Nurse
- Doctor
- Social Worker
- Spiritual Leader
Some resources that people can use in the case of a mental health emergency include:
Below is a list of lesson topics from Rock Digi’s Mental Health, SEL, and Substance Abuse Prevention curriculum.
- Mental Health – Self-Care
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Coping with Grief and Loss
- Real Friends (Building Healthy Relationships)
- Making Healthy Choices – Problem Solving
- Binge Drinking and Alcohol Poisoning
- Tobacco, Vaping, and Nicotine
- Methamphetamine and Cocaine
- Opioids, Heroin, and Fentanyl
- Substance Use Disorder
- Your Spark
We must create a safe space for people to feel different emotions. When we all work to create a safe space for people to express their emotions, this creates an environment where people feel more comfortable reaching out for help without judgement. When more people feel safe and comfortable reaching out for help, this helps to ensure more people are able to live happy, healthy, and successful lives.
Our goal with the Mental Health, SEL, and Substance Abuse Prevention curriculum for grades 7-12 is to help students learn social emotional learning skills so they have the tools to be resilient, accomplish their goals, and be their authentic selves.
Some other resources about Adolescent Mental Health are:
National Institute of Mental Health - Child and Adolescent Mental Health
Center for Disease Control and Prevention - Adolescent and School Health, Mental Health
Visit rockdigi.org for more information and free trial lessons.
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