Hey beautifuls!
On Friday 7th October, I had the pleasure of attending the Well Being and Mental Health Conference at The Priory School in Hitchin - the first ever UK schools' conference about mental health. I am honestly honoured to say that I was a part of that conference as it is the start of something amazing in my eyes. It is evident that mental health has been brought to attention to many people hence the many charities and funds out there to help those who are suffering in silence or with diagnosed disorders. However, I am 100% sure that there is not enough attention towards mental health at all due to the sigma attached - this is something I raised an understanding of, previously in the year on Time to Talk Day.
The day consisted of various workshop sessions throughout the day as well as a few talks and prize givings. As well as this, there were many organisations who had come to present beautiful stalls and to talk about what their charity or fund was based on. These organisations were the following:
- CAMHS
- Time to Change
- Youth Connexions
- KOOTH
- Be Who You Dare
- LGBTQ+
- Alumina
Plus many more which will be shown in my YouTube vlog of this event.
The workshop sessions that were taking place, included:
- Suicide Prevention
- Self-Harm
- Yoga
- 5 Things to WellBeing
- Well Being Forum
- LGBTQ+
- Time to Talk
- Drama/Art Therapy
Out of these, I was elected to take part in the Yoga, Drama/Art Therapy and Well Being Forum sessions which were all incredible and I had the chance to speak to many other students who were passionate about this topic.
Yoga
Before this session, I had never actually taken part in a yoga session but I can tell you now that I really really enjoyed it. After experiencing the hardest times in my mental illness journey, I considered taking part in Yoga classes to help relief stress instead of resorting to harming myself. Although, I did not get round to starting this, I believe it is not too late so hopefully I can fit this into my weekly routine soon and I recommend you do also! In the small amount of time I had, I was still able to come out of the gym in such a relaxed mood than I first walked in with.
People tend to think that Yoga is only for girls but in fact, the yoga teacher from the conference has more male students than female which surprised many people in the room. Not only does Yoga relax you, but it also teaches you resilience as some of the postures may be very difficult to hold.
I have definitely learnt a lot about Yoga which I didn't think I would before attending the session.
Give it a try - you might like it!
Drama/Art Therapy
I was extremely excited about taking part in this activity as some of you know that I am aspiring to become an Art Therapist in the future. During this time, we created our own creature using plasticine and then we made a story board about this creature of ours which included: the home, its purpose, a problem it faced, who helped the problem and the outcome of the help. Soon after we got into the activity, everybody started to recognise that their was a pattern in all of our stories as it turned out to reflect our own personal lives and experiences.
I found this session really interesting and I hope to implement this into plans for my school as it clearly does make a difference to people, whether these therapeutic sessions are through art, music, drama or even dance.
Well Being Forum
In this session, we did a lot of discussing about how we can improve the awareness of mental health in schools and what we can place in our own schools that can really helpful. Personally I think this workshop was a great one to end with as it gave my group so much motivation and inspiration to get started on our action plans which we cannot wait to start.
As well as the different stalls and the various sessions, we had a few speakers being the Assistant Head of The Priory School in Hitchin, Jim McManus and Steve Mallon. All of the speakers were amazing but to me, Steve stood out the most as his talk was very hard hitting. I won't be going into detail, but his son killed himself a few weeks after his 18th birthday and 6 weeks after his got accepted at Cambridge University, this led Steve to start up a mental health charity - the way he speaks is so captivating and I am glad he was able to attend the conference.
This event has really inspired me to take more action in raising awareness because we cannot just sit back and do nothing - that would be the worst thing we could do. So please, I ask you to share this if you can, not for me but for everybody else out there because you may be helping to the extend of saving a life by letting people know its okay to speak up. Tweet, snap, instagram or even just spread the word by talking about mental health because I believe that we can really make a difference as it is possible if we get people on board!
I hope to continue to do my part in helping as much as I can and don't forget that you can email, tweet, snapchat or even DM me on Instagram for any queries or suggestions.
Remember to have faith beautifuls, I love you lots,
Sanyha xo
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