What strategies do students use for their mental health in school and ways to cope with them?

Lesson:

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  A) Identifying Players (Hook) – 2 min

1. Students will be asked to take a quick survey testing their knowledge of mental health 

2. Students will then be asked to write down their stress levels on a scale of 1-10  

 Open discussion question-  Ask Students to write down 5 main stressors they may be experiencing and will share with the class.

• I will be passing out coloring sheets and will instruct the students to color through the lesson 

 

B) Introduction - A deeper understanding of mental health 

      a)  What is mental health?

      b) Facts and quotes: 

                       i) Mental health is an overall effect on our health; it includes our emotional, social, and psychological well-being. It takes a toll on our everyday life affecting relationships with the people we love and ourselves. (Ilodibe)

• We will talk about the stressors students face like Depression, Anxiety, and Social aspects 

• Will Analyze the rates of mental health in students 

• I will briefly touch on Academic pressure  

1. Ask the students to give their thoughts on this question, Do schools essentially do enough for students' mental health?

 

Activity one: “Spot the difference”  Show a picture of a psychiatric patient and a college student

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

• Ask the students to analyze the picture and see if they can see anything in common 

• Explain the research found

• Quote: “Two new meta-analytic studies involving thousands of children and college students show that anxiety has increased substantially since the 1950s. In fact, the studies find that anxiety has increased so much that typical schoolchildren during the 1980s reported more anxiety than child psychiatric patients did during the 1950's” (“Studies”)

 

C) Learning Coping Strategies:

    a) Show examples of what strategies students are able to use to help with mental health 

    b) Ask students what strategies they use and if it's helpful to them.

                    i) Writing down goals 

                    ii) Exercise 

                    iii) Meditation 

        

D) Lecture: Video on mental health overall 

1. Show a brief clip on mental health 

2. Have a discussion about the video with the students 

 https://youtu.be/DxIDKZHW3-E     

 

E) Mental health activity: Meditation 

https://youtu.be/SEfs5TJZ6Nk 

 

F) Opinions and thoughts from the students 

• Did meditation help calm you down? 

• Was there a difference in your mood?

1. Collect the coloring sheets from the students and get a brief opinion on if the coloring did anything to help ease their minds. 

 

Materials -

• Statistics of the rates of mental health 

• Coloring book

• Paper Survey