Healthy Minds
A program delivered to our Year 8s that focusses on wellbeing and resilience skills…..for life.
We specifically teach our students:
- The thinking skills that prevent or reduce risk for depression, anxiety, eating disorders & body image problems (without specifically focussing on any particular psychological disorder).
- How ‘unhelpful perfectionism’ plays a troublesome role in mental health, achievement and general quality of life.
- The keys to understanding the function of emotions, and the most helpful ways of navigating their emotional lives.
- Psychological flexibility.
- Realistic thinking (this is the key skill of modern cognitive behaviour therapy).
- Self-compassion as an antidote to self-criticism (and why this is far more important than self-esteem).
- Ways to understand and deal with procrastination – these work for school, work and life.
- To challenge the unrealistic media ideals that promote body-image dissatisfaction, which can lead to disordered eating and depression.
- The cultivation of gratitude as an everyday perspective (it has been shown to improve sleep, immune system function, and happiness).
- The motivational techniques that change problem behaviours into helpful, healthy, and high-performance behaviours.