Doing good does you good

Posted: 13th October 2017

St Augustine's Priory

World Mental Health Day 2017

“Tomorrow is World Mental Health day and one way to promote positive mental health is through being kind to others!” Miss Kumarasinghe told us on Monday. Our Head of Senior PSHEE, Miss Kumarasinghe, led a whole school initiative on Tuesday 10th October to get everyone involved in and aware of World Mental Health Day.

According to the Mental Health Foundation, research has shown that helping others can actually help reduce stress, improve your emotional wellbeing and even benefit your physical health. The charity says that altruism promotes positive physiological changes in parts of the brain associated with happiness.

Miss Kumarasinghe had organised for girls to be assigned another student in their class, so that they could each perform random acts of kindness towards their given student on World Mental Health Day. “By now you have received an email from either Mia D or myself telling you who your random act of kindness recipient is”, Miss Kumarasinghe announced, “Please try to be extra kind to this person and keep in mind that if anyone is away ill or on a course that someone out there may be feeling a little unloved so try and share the love if possible!”.

“They don’t need to be big gestures at all, some ideas include things such as writing them a nice note, holding the door open for them, helping carry their books or just telling them they’re great!”

Staff were also assigned other members of staff and challenged to do the same – “again the gestures don’t need to be big but think about things that might brighten their day or help to alleviate some stress or just make them smile”. Needless to say there were smiles all round on Tuesday as everyone made a conscious effort to offer compliments and go that little bit further for each other, before order resumed on Wednesday.

 

Categories: Senior Sixth Form Whole School