Head ED – Lesson 1

The Standup kid

  1. Teacher’s body language – fairly dismissive, seated. Spoken language – mocking towards Michael.
  2. Banter of the other students – doesn’t seem malicious and, assuming they don’t know anything of Michael’s mental health struggle; this is the type of banter most groups of friends would convey.
  3. Dead arm example - ask students if this helped you understand depression? Think about the common phrase ‘I’m depressed’ used by people when they’ve had a bad day or an argument with a friend – are they really depressed? Does this really make you feel like your whole body can’t move/be controlled?
  4. Do you think in a real school a person with mental health problems would have the courage to stand up and tell their classmates about it? Why/why not? This is a good chance to introduce the term ‘stigma’ – se next powerpoint slide for definition.

Mental Health and Mental Illness

  1. There are lots of definitions for mental health and the most common misconception when the phrase ‘mental health’ is heard is that we are talking about mental illness. Stress that everyone has mental health and just like physical health there is a huge scale sliding from healthy to unhealthy. Mental health can be thought of as
  • how we feel about ourselves and the people around us
  • our ability to make and keep friends
  • our ability to learn from others and to develop emotionally
  • our ability to overcome everyday difficulties and problems

Warning signs of mental health problems are when we can’t manage one or more of the above.

  1. The mental health scale – this activity is designed to show students that people move up and down the ‘scale’ of wellbeing, often depending on what is happening in their lives. Students pair up and one in the pair is given Alfie’s diary, one Amelia’s. Use the diaries to show how the Wellbeing of Alfie and Amelia is affected by external events. The specific numbers students use in their graphs don’t matter, what we are looking for is a fluctuating pattern and clear peaks and troughs in the graphs.

Michael is unlikley to move up or down the scale as much as Alfie or Amelia as he’s suffering from clinical depression. He will still move however. This should be strongly pointed out to students which should help them understand that depression is a serious illness.

The brain and neuroimaging

  1. The two fists together are about the size of an individual's brain. Stress that brain size in humans is not related to intelligence.
  2. The Brain game – the point to emphasise from this article is that mental health conditions are caused by something going wrong in the brain. Stuff goes wrong with our bodies constantly but the general public response when something goes wrong in the rest of the body – cancer, heart attack etc – is sympathy. This should be pointed out to students.