On Friday 8th March, our mental health ambassadors attended a student conference on mental health with Stem4. Stem4 is a teenage mental health charity based in Wimbledon that promotes positive mental health in teenagers and those who support them including their families and carers, education professionals, as well as school nurses and GPs through the provision of mental health education, resilience strategies and early intervention.
The conference was held at Fulham Cross Academy where we were greeted by Dr Nihara and the Stem4 ambassadors. Dr Nihara led the first session on positive mental health. She shared healthy practice on eating and sleeping habits in order to regulate the stress hormone cortisol. Did you know that if you don’t sleep enough you can wake up stressed?
Our second session was on managing stress and anxiety. At the start of the conference we were all given clickapads which enabled us to respond to any questions during the presentations by voting. 40% of us named overthinking as the predominant unhelpful type of thought we have. Did you know that the more anxious we feel, the more we think?
During the conference we listened to 3 lived experiences from the Stem4 ambassadors, all young adults sharing their own experiences of their mental health. We listened to Rosie share how she had just been coping with high levels of stress from when she started a high achieving school in Year 7 up to university. We listened to Flynn – an actor and director who told us about his medical anxiety leading to panic attacks. Lastly, we listened to Shad who lived with high expectations as a child which resulted in self harm and an attempted suicide.
The conference ended with a school competition to leave a mental health legacy to our schools. It gave us the opportunity as a group to see what Tiffin does and what we can do better to support young people with their mental health. Each school presented and we are pleased to announce that our legacy was judged the best by Stem4.
Further support:
Stem4 have five apps that can help teenagers; calmharm (to help manage self-harm), clearfear (to manage the symptoms of anxiety), movemood (to help with low mood or depression), combinedminds (for families and friends) and worth warrior (to help with low self worth, poor body image and eating disorders).
Flynn has his film, Midpoint on Youtube. It’s based on his own experience of panic attacks and anxiety.
