Mental Health and Wellbeing at FMS
Mental Health at Fulston Manor Academies Trust
Having a conversation about our mental health is a normal and useful thing to do. It is estimated by the charity Mind that around 1 in 4 people will experience a mental health problem during the course of a year, and 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 page is designed to help you begin to explore all the available support, and to help structure conversations with staff, family members or peers.
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 adverse 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 on resilience training for students:
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 https://youngminds.org.uk/find-help/ or via the ‘Booklets for young people’ or ‘Useful contacts’ sections at https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/guides-to-support-and-services/children-and-young-people/
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 physiological response to certain situations – a looming 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 taboo, or embarrassing, is of benefit to us all.
If, in the future, it happens to be you facing such challenges, the means of dealing with the problems and finding the right help should be more apparent and the conversations with others of more benefit.
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 capacity for a short course of one-to-one counselling available in school. You should speak to your Head of House or the Head of Sixth Form 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.
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.
