Overview
Teaching young people about mental health and well-being in schools is essential, as it promotes awareness and understanding, reduces stigma, helps with prevention, supports early intervention, and encourages positive habits.
Using the National Curriculum, we have linked as many opportunities as possible to deliver mental health through a range of different subject areas. These opportunities can be used to either deliver the topic as a stand-alone or through cross-curricular planning with a number of different subject areas, depending on the focus of the school.
The suggested lessons allow you to broadly focus on mental health topics using the 10 fundamentals and the five-step process. It's important to link these back to youth social action and how the learning can be used to make a difference.
Each lesson plan lightly integrates the learning or practice of a specific life/employability skill, such as oracy, teamwork, reflection, and/or problem-solving. In addition, each lesson links learning to potential youth social projects that other young people have delivered to make a difference.
Additional Resources
- When can we teach about mental health at school? – Curriculum Integration.
(Relationship, Sex and Health Education, Personal, Social, Health Education, Citizenship, Science, RE, English, Music, Art, and Information technology) - Background reading
- Teaching Mental Health5 bespoke lessons focusing on teaching young people about mental health and well-being.
- Lesson 1 – What is mental health?
- Lesson 2 – Understand factors which contribute to an individual's mental health.
- Lesson 3 – What can affect your mental health?
- Lesson 4 – Know simple self-care techniques about being physically active.
- Lesson 5 – Mindfulness through Art and Music
| Case Study | Authors |
|---|---|
| MH Case Studies | Samia Akram |
