When teacher Amy Christiansen asked four Grade 8 students in Ecole Deer Meadow School's Interact Club what project they wanted to work on to improve their school, they chose to focus on mental health.
“These ladies decided that mental health was an area that kids needed help with,” she said.
So, from May 6 to 10— which was National Mental Health Week in Canada— the club provided information on different kinds of mental health issues and hosted an array of activities for the entire school focused on how students could keep their minds and moods healthy.
The majority of the activities focused on exercise and physical fitness and Courtney Poland, one of the four club members who pitched the mental health awareness theme, said putting emphasis on staying active comes from the concept that a healthy body leads to a healthy mind.
“When you're out and you're doing things, your mind's taken off all of the things that you're thinking about that are bringing you down and it just boosts you up,” she said. “It helped me with keeping my mind away from anything that was going to put me down.”
Another member of the foursome, Sydney Allen, described the gym-focused exercises as “sporty activities” such as belly baseball— where players have to stay on their bellies while on base— yoga, capture the flag and a dance-off.
She said the physical activities are just one tool students can use to stay mentally healthy should they identify a problem in their lives.
“Not a lot of youth know how to keep their mental health healthy,” Sydney said. “If they are depressed, they don't know how to fix it.”
Laura Klinck and Shay Walls, who rounded out the group of students who helped carry out mental health-themed activities at the school, said along with coming up with the concept for the activities, they also took away some ideas about how to manage their own mental health.
“(I'm) eating healthy, just getting my right amount of sleep and staying active so you just feel better about yourself and your body's healthy,” Laura said.
And Shay said she has already adjusted some of her behaviours to include exercise and spending more face-time with the people around her.
“I was outside more and I wasn't on the phone as much and I was really active this week to boost my mental stability.”
Christiansen said along with the activities, a major component of the weeklong program was awareness and the club constructed a bulletin board in the school showing students that if they feel a certain way, there are steps that can be taken to change those feelings such as reducing sugar and caffeine in their diets and socializing more.
She added she was proud that the girls took it upon themselves to help make the school more aware of mental health issues, particularly at a time when many students are dealing with significant emotional changes.
“Mental health has always been a part of the puzzle, especially at the middle school level with kids figuring out who they are.”
Sydney said upcoming projects at the school focused on mental health will include a rainbow week, where each colour of the rainbow will represent a different mental health issue such as depression, eating disorders or self-harm and each class at the school will present videos each day to educate students on those issues.
Hopefully, Courtney said, the mental health-themed activities at the school will provide some tools to students struggling with problems such as depression or body image.
“I feel that there's this nasty stigma attached to mental health and people need to know that it's just as important as physical health and there's ways to improve it as well,” she said. “You know the people who have been struggling to stay positive and there's a lot of pressure I think, in middle school especially, to be a certain way or look a certain way or do stuff a certain way and it brings them down because they know they're not that person.”
She added she hopes the school will continue to provide education on mental health as a regular part of its curriculum.
“We're not going to be at this school next year but we hope that it will be continued in Interact and for kids to know that it's important and they should keep an eye on their mental health.”
The school's Interact Club, to which the four girls belong, aims to promote leadership and service to the school and community.
