Mental Health Week

This October we celebrated Mental Health Week. To advocate for mental health, the Wellbeing Team offered a number of initiatives to the Saint Ignatius community during week 2 of Term 4.

We began at the start of the week with mental health pledges. Staff and students were offered a chance to make a pledge to commit to a self-care activity for the week. Participants had the choice to choose from a number of suggested pledges such as “Tell a teacher or peer that I am grateful for them” or simply “eat a healthy breakfast every day this week”. Participants could also make their own pledge. Some of these included “paint for most of the weekend”, “work out each day”, and perhaps the most fun example “tell my cat I like her”.

We would like to especially praise the special efforts of homeroom teachers Ms Carly Jenkins of 7 Licona, Ms Aleisha Gill of 9 Regis, and Ms Laura Taylor-Payne of 11 Hurtado for their outstanding effort with such a great representation of student participation.

On Tuesday we shared some great video resources for students to watch. One was a now-famous talk by Brene Brown on the importance and power of vulnerability. The other was a short discussion with Demi Lovato regarding the importance of reaching out when you need to.

In addition, Ms Phillips offered a yoga video for students on Wednesday to participate in at home and Dylan from Wellbeing offered a meditation class on Thursday. To bring Mental Health Week to an end, on Friday, Wellbeing shared our ‘Tea and Talk’ tips for families to get together over the weekend to connect and reflect. So much of mental health has to do with supportive and healthy relationships.

We’re grateful to have shared Mental Health Week with you all and would like to congratulate everyone on taking steps to improving their own mental health.

From the Student Wellbeing Team (Dylan, Sarah, Mel and Liv)