Mental Health and Wellbeing

Mental Health at Buxton All-Through School

Talking to one another about our mental health is a normal, useful and empowering thing to do. Mind, a charity that provides advice and support in mental health, has estimated that around 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem during the course of a year.

Consequently, for 1 in 6 people they experience a common mental health problem in any given week. It is also important to recognise that we are a community of students, staff and parents and carers and a strong community is one that communicates well with one another.

This Mental Health and Wellbeing page has been designed to help you start to explore all the available support, and to help structure conversations with staff, family members or friends.

Personal Resilience

One of the first things to recognise is that even if you are feeling overwhelmed by your workload or by personal issues, there are plenty of times that you will have demonstrated resilience and coped with difficult situations.

Reminding yourself and rewarding yourself for your own resilience is one way to manage the regular ups and downs of your life. You have shown that you can cope in a range of situations, and in fact you can be your own best helper at the first stage. Have a read through the following article or booklet on resilience training for students:

Resilience booklet

Guardian article on How to teach students to persevere

Understanding Mental Health and Finding Help

If you believe that your own mental health needs have gone beyond self-management, reading self-help and so on, you can seek some more specialist advice through Young Minds or via the ‘Booklets for young people’ or ‘Useful contacts’ sections on the Mind website.

Understanding mental health also means understanding when something has gone beyond a normal or typical experience. As an example, understanding anxiety is something most people can relate to. It is important to realise that anxiety is a normal bodily response to certain situations – an approaching deadline or an overdue piece of work, an upcoming exam or driving test for example.

In some situations, this can even be helpful, getting you to focus and work hard. However, an anxiety disorder is when you get anxious for a wide variety of reasons that are not typical for other people, or your stress-response becomes overwhelming (hyperventilating, crying, scratching yourself etc.). It is if you recognise elements from these more serious types of signs that you should look to find further help. 

Normalise the conversation

Remember that the more we talk about Mental Health in general and the more familiar we all become with the issues, the easier those conversations will be. Normalising discussion of mental health rather than treating it as off-limits, or embarrassing, is of benefit to us all.

If, in the future, it happens to be you facing such challenges, the ways of dealing with the problems and finding the right help should be more obvious and the conversations with others be more beneficial.

Healthy Relationships

If you are concerned about your relationship or that of a friend, and suspect that it may be having a negative impact on emotional wellbeing, or even reach the extent of including emotional abuse, then explore the information found at www.safe-services.org.uk and talk to someone to express your concerns and feel less alone in confronting the problem.

Getting professional help

There is also a small scope for a short course of one-to-one counselling available in school. You should speak to your Head of Year or Class Teacher if you think you would benefit from this, or if you don’t feel comfortable doing so, ask a parent, carer or another adult to talk to us on your behalf.

There are also numerous Mental Health First Aiders in Primary and Secondary Phases who are trained to help you.

If you have a feeling that you need urgent help or that you feel so low, angry or upset that you have considered harming yourself, then the best way to get help quickly is by going to your GP and asking if they can refer you for support.

Sign Posting in School:

• Form tutors
• Subject teachers
• SEN Department and
• Teaching Assistants
• Heads of Year
• Mental Health First Aiders
• Mrs. Bilbrough, SENCO and Mental Health Lead
• Ms. O’Sullivan, Assistant Headteacher, Behaviour and Wellbeing and Senior Mental Health Lead
• Ms. Frost, Deputy Headteacher and Designated Safeguarding Lead

Sign Posting, if you are not at school and not in a crisis

Mind www.mind.org.uk

Samaritans www.samaritans.org.uk

Young Minds www.youngminds.org.uk

Sign posting if you are not at school and in a crisis

NELFT NHS www.nelft.nhs.uk/services-mental-health-direct

Art Work by Buxton Students

Buxton School Youth Mental Health Booklet

The link will take you to a youth mental health first aider booklet compiled by some of our Mental Health First Aiders.

Youth MHFA Booklet