The WRPS Wellness Support Team is celebrating Mental Health Week in schools from May 3 to 9. Check out our daily themes, participate in your classroom, and remember to #GetReal this Mental Health Week.
This year’s Mental Health Week is all about getting real about how we feel. We will do that by getting right up close to our feelings so that we can identify and name them. When we name how we feel, instead of numbing it, we actually feel better. When we name our emotions, we can tame them. Especially the harder ones! The ones we sometimes call “negative”. It turns out that science says that naming how we feel actually changes our brain. And it has other benefits you might not expect. We can’t empathize without being in touch with how we’re feeling ourselves, so this language of emotions helps us provide the support that matches what someone is feeling, fosters connections while allowing us to connect and solve problems together.
Did you know? When children learn about their emotions for as little as 30 minutes a week, both their behaviour and their academic success improve! (Brackett, et al., 2012)
Connect with your school's Wellness Coach for more information and resources!
Reference:
Brackett, M. A., Rivers, S. E., Reyes, M. R., & Salovey, P. (2012). Enhancing academic performance and social and emotional competence with the RULER feeling words curriculum. Learning and Individual Differences, 22, 218– 224.https://www.sciencedirect.