Will A Mental Health Academy Aid In My Well-Being? Having good mental health and living well is extremely important to every single one of us, whether we are mentally ill or just struggling with everyday emotions.
What is Mental Health
Mental health is related to the social and emotional well-being of individuals.
The culture related to mental health relates to:
- Enjoyment of everyday life.
- Having the ability to cope and get back to reality from stress and sadness.
- Being able to set and complete daily goals.
- Build and maintain relationships with others daily.
Tips for mental health and well-being!
It is so easy for us to take our mental health for granted, to prioritize other things. In our minds, we set tasks for ourselves, and when the time comes to do them, we set them aside, thinking it is too hard to do at the moment. But it’s not. There are things everyone can do, even if it’s at their own steady pace.
Use the following tips to get started on your journey!
Sleep and Rest!
Sleep will affect your physical and mental health, but it is the first thing we give away when we get too busy or stressed.
- Take time out for things you enjoy. Balance is very important. Taking time out of your schedule for things you enjoy will make a difference in how you think and feel.
- Be active and eat well. Our physical and mental health are linked together, so adding exercise and nutritious food to your everyday diet will make you feel better.
- Connect with others. Our connection with others is what builds us as people and keeps us going.
- Learn to manage stress. If you have trouble winding down or handling your thoughts, you may find relaxation, or writing what you are feeling down can be helpful.
- Get involved. Being part of a group with your common interests provides a feeling of belonging, so find out about sports, music, or community groups in your local area.
- Build confidence. Learning new things improves your mental fitness, and taking on a new challenge every day or every other day can build confidence and give you a sense of achievement.
- Be comfortable in your own skin. Everyone is unique in their own way. Know who you are, and do what makes you happy no matter what.
- Set realistic goals and deal with these tasks one at a time. It is good to be specific when you set a goal to help keep you on track.
- Ask for help should you need it. Everyone needs support. Talk to a close friend, a family member, or one of the many services available can make all the difference.
Why Mental Health And Well-Being Should Be Promoted In a Mental Health Academy
For some people, mental health issues emerge when they are young, half of all mental disorders will rear by the time people are 14 years old and the other half its head by 25 years old, this is the same period when most people are busy educating themselves, and that is when people have the most stress and anxiety from studying and getting up to no time for themselves because they are too busy creating a future for themselves some make time for themselves and some don’t because they have to carry the weight of their families being disappointed in them if they don’t do a good job in university, and that makes a lot of people feel worthless and carry stress on their shoulders!
As well as increasing a person’s opportunity and decisions in life, promoting mental health and well-being as a secondary role in education helps students:
- Succeed better in their education journey.
- Build strength against difficult situations.
- Develop protective factors for mental health.
- Provide them with confidence to seek help early.
Aiming To Raise Quality And Standards Across The Entire School
This involves everyone in a mental health academy, teachers, staff, and parents to place a safe and inclusive learning culture and environment, including:
- Providing social and emotional skill programs.
- Providing prompt support for those with additional needs.
- Involving students and families in decision-making.
Strength Building For Students
Strength is the ability to cope and thrive in the face of negative events or challenges. However, this is a skill that can be developed!
- Positive social connections.
- Safe Environments.
- Life skills such as positive coping and problem-solving skills.
- Pro-social values.
- Positive self-respect.
- A sense of purpose and responsibility.
Health and Physical Education Learning Area
This focuses on students enhancing their own and other people’s health, safety, well-being, and physical activity participation in varied and changing contexts. This specific curriculum focuses on helping students develop the understanding and skills required to make safe choices that will enhance their own and other people’s health and well-being.
Personal and Social Capability
This involves students:
- Learning to recognize and regulate emotions.
- Develop compassion for others and understand relationships better.
- Establish positive relationships.
- Work effectively in teams!
A Mental Health Academy
Your mental health is considered equally as important as your physical health.
You often can’t see it with your eyes. Mental illness problems can cause serious damage to a person’s well-being, mentally and physically! For us to work on mental health issue prevention, we need to raise awareness about these problems. A mental health academy is definitely one of the main places where mental health awareness needs to be spread.
Mental health awareness in schools is enormous. Let’s take a detailed look at why we need schools to spread awareness about mental health.
Closing the Gap
Schools are supposed to help our younger generation prepare for the world that awaits at the end of their schooling days and all the obstacles they will run into.
Most schools of today teach:
- Physical health.
- Health education.
- Nutrition.
- Sex education.
However, there’s a massive hole when it comes to mental health. Without being properly educated students won’t know how to:
- Recognize the problem that they’re experiencing.
- Opening up about it.
- Look for help when it gets bad.
- Help other people with similar or other mental health problems.
This hole needs to be closed soon, and the children need to have a chance of dealing with their mental health problems just like they’ll deal with any other problem they have.
Suicide & Mental Illnesses
Suicide is and has always been one of the leading causes of death among the ages of ages 10-25 worldwide. Raising awareness of suicide will immediately lower the rates of such tragic event happening!
Talking and learning about mental health illnesses will leave a positive impact on the students struggling:
- They will learn about therapy and how to treat their problem correctly.
- They will be more ready to talk about it than bottle it in.
- They will acknowledge that they have a problem.
Everything in the statements above will hopefully lower the suicide rate and offer young people a solution other than ending their life.
Early Intervention
Like any other disease or health problem, early interventions are just as important in mental health.
Teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, and everyone else has to learn about it.
- Early detection of mental illness or suicidal tendencies!
- Spotting the meaningful changes in someone’s everyday behavior
- Act upon any signs of mental illness promptly!
- Social Media Influence
We all love using social media to get information, find entertainment, and connect with our friends and celebrities. There is a rather ugly side to it that not many people are not actually talking about.
The truth is, social media does have consequences and can leave extremely deep scars in the minds of the users who use it on an everyday basis, especially the younger generation of today.
Watching rich, famous, and successful people on social media can cause mental health problems in young children, causing:
- Low self-esteem.
- Self Perception.
- Depression.
- Anxiety.
Since social media is on the rise each year, with nearly 3.5 billion + active users worldwide, the effect it has on the younger generation around our schools is mind-blowing.
This is a threat. Schools will need to raise the bar in mental health awareness and ensure their students are learning about:
- Self-Love.
- How they should value themselves.
- Loving one another.
- Not judging one another.
- Talking About their insecurities.
This would be an advantage for the proper development of students and prevent them from feeling demoralized or depressed.
Eliminating the Cause
It’s important to learn and be educated about the negative effects of mental health issues and how to treat them. It’s important to learn about the main causes as well.
Learning about the causes of stress, depression, and anxiety is important, and school can be a a negative or positive trigger for most students experiencing mental health issues.
Students feel stressed out due to:
- School pressure.
- Peer pressure
- Bullying at school
- Strict teachers
- Homework Overload
- The pressure of having high grades.
If everyone in schools knew what stressed out the students the most, they would find a way to eliminate these stress factors and create a calmer atmosphere at school for the students.
This will help the children find their peace and balance and get rid of the feeling of anxiety, and stress, which could, later on, develop into even more severe mental health issues.
Mental Health And Awareness and a Mental Health Academy
It’s very important to raise mental health awareness in schools and this may be why a mental health academy may help since younger people are affected daily by their mental health issues. They desperately need a system that they can rely on and some source of information to get them through the process of dealing with their inner issues on a daily basis. Schools need to make changes and get as many people as possible to work on raising mental health awareness.
