Mental Health Awareness Week 2021- Connect with Nature

This week is Mental Health Awareness Week – one of the biggest awareness weeks across the UK. This week is organised and hosted by the Mental Health Foundation which is a charity focused on mental health prevention and helps people to understand, protect and sustain their mental health. Each year, the Mental Health Foundation sets the theme and encourages individuals, schools, communities, and organisations to get involved. This year, the theme is ‘Connect with Nature’. Nature was chosen because millions of us turned to it during the pandemic. Many of us found that going for walks was one of the top coping strategies and being out in green spaces has improved our mental health and wellbeing. Throughout the lockdowns, we have not only just spent more time outdoors but we have also started to notice nature more / re-discover it.

There are many benefits to connecting with nature for our mental health, which include feeling happier, feeling less stressed or angry, having more and better-quality sleep and feeling less worried.  It also increases self-esteem and self-confidence. This week offers an opportunity for our students to talk about all aspects of mental health and find their own way of connecting with nature.

Our students can connect with nature and improve their mental health in the following ways:

• Staying active outdoors: It is important that we keep active every day to look after both our physical and mental health. Exercising in green spaces such as parks or forests for as little as five minutes can improve mood and self-esteem. You can stay active outdoors by going for a walk/run/cycle, playing outdoor games with friends (e.g. football/ rounders/ netball) or by stretching/practicing yoga outside.
• Spending time with family & friends outdoors: As lockdown restrictions have eased, we have been spending more time outdoors with our friends and family. Nature often provides a great space to connect and socialise with family and friends. You can connect with nature by having a picnic, going for a group walk or visiting local heritage spots.
• If going outside isn’t possible or feels difficult at the moment, you could explore ways of bringing nature indoors. For example, eating breakfast in front of the window, observing the nature outside, buying an indoor plant and taking care of it or watching a wildlife programme such as ‘Planet Earth’. Studies have shown that watching nature programmes can reduce anxiety, fear, stress and fatigue.  They also increase relaxation, contentment, excitement and joy. We have decided to bring nature indoors for our students by providing each form with an indoor plant to take care of.
• Many people find nature inspires them to get creative! Creative activities can reduce stress and improve mood and wellbeing. This could be things like writing some creative sentences, doing a quick sketch of a natural object, writing a poem or song lyrics about your favourite nature spot, taking photographs of landscapes and natural objects and collecting natural objects and making a handmade card for a loved one.
• We would love to see how our students connect with nature throughout the rest of the month. Therefore, we are asking our students to take a selfie/ picture of what they have been up to and upload it to the ‘Mental Health Awareness’ week entry on Class Charts!

  #mentalhealthawarenessweek   #connectwithnature

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