Marking Mental Health Awareness Week at St Mary’s

This week St Mary’s is marking Mental Health Awareness Week with a range of wellbeing activities hosted across the school, each designed to demonstrate the importance of looking after our mental and emotional welfare.

Heightening our strong focus on pastoral care, we have devised an abundance of mindfulness activities that will be taking place over lunchtimes this week to help our students focus on practising and exploring different techniques to support their mental health. To kick start the week, students are being encouraged to write a note of gratitude to a friend or member of staff to share on our ‘Gratitude Board’ for everyone to view.

Each day pupils will be able to take part in drop-in colouring and Lego activities. There will also be indoor and outdoor yoga taster sessions on Wednesday and Thursday, as well as a host of other activities such as self-care key ring making, a creative collage workshop, gardening club, karate and self-defence, and an introduction to journaling for students to express their thoughts and feelings creatively. Pupils can even come and stroke some furry dog friends at the Outdoor Learning Lab on Friday lunchtime.

Mental Health Awareness Week has been running for 22 years and is hosted by the Mental Health Foundation. The charity works to prevent mental health problems by helping people understand, protect, and sustain their psychological health. Its’ vision is for a world with good mental health for all. 

The theme for Mental Health Awareness Week this year is ‘Anxiety’ and there is a dedicated section on our Wellbeing Page focused on anxiety and panic attacks. Useful leaflets about dealing with anxiety are also available for our students to read.

Find out more about Mental Health Awareness Week.