Mental health literacy refers to the knowledge, beliefs, and skills that enable individuals to recognise, manage, and prevent mental health issues. It involves both understanding and advocating for support for your own or others’ mental health challenges.
It seems like a heavy topic for middle-schoolers, but Assia Nait Kassi, the founder and owner of MentalEdGroup — a research consultancy and health education group that aims to normalise the topic of mental health — says it’s a critical skill as children develop into teens.
“Middle school is a period of significant emotional, cognitive, and social development,” said the 36-year-old Abu Dhabi resident from the Netherlands.
“Studies worldwide show that most mental health problems and related behavioural problems start at age 11 onwards but kids at this age don’t have the knowledge and correct language to put into words what they’re experiencing, let alone advocate for themselves.”
Nait Kassi recently piloted HeadsUp! — a mental health literacy programme that was delivered in school for one hour a week to Year 6 students at an elite British international school in Abu Dhabi.
The starting point of mental health literacy varied vastly among students.
“I had some groups with zero knowledge on how to identify feelings and basic terms,” Nait Kassi explained. “Others knew [and] threw around words like ‘anxiety’ and ‘depression’ but wrongly labelled themselves and others as experiencing these mental health issues.
“And because it’s an international school, everybody comes with references from their own family and culture. There were some groups of kids that initially refused to be involved in the conversation [saying] mental health was a ‘bad’ thing and they didn’t want to talk about it.”
As a stepped-care programme, HeadsUp! lessons started with basic knowledge of mental health, with another layer of knowledge added every week. A diverse array of specially-designed characters in the lessons who addressed common concerns used storytelling to take the students through the programme.
“The programme has an evidence-based foundation but we used the class dynamics to tailor it to what each class needed. If conversations took longer than planned, we would accommodate further exploration because clearly the topics were relevant to and resonated with the students,” Nait Kassi said.
Using information nudges to spark discussion, certified YouTube infoclips to add to the literacy, and tech-tools to recap knowledge, the five-week programme actively built momentum in the classroom. The last session was a Walk&Talk; it combined physical and mental health. It encouraged children to see physical activity as a pathway to better mental health.
For her part, Emma Butterworth, the 36-year-old British teacher at the school that piloted the programme, was a great proponent of HeadsUp!. Butterworth was the curriculum lead and had a responsibility for ethos and well-being.
“Student well-being should come at the forefront of what we do as educators,” she said. “When the emotional needs of the child are met, mental health is nurtured, social communication is encouraged, and natural gifts and talents of students are celebrated, children thrive.
“One of the great things about Nait Khassi’s resources was that they were relative to the cultural setting of the UAE. The cartoon characters that she created for her presentations were representative of the international community in Abu Dhabi. It was great to see a lot of the Emirati students engaging because they saw someone similar to themselves up there on the screen.
“For students to feel a sense of belonging in an international setting, this is really important.” By the end of the programme, Nait Kassi reported that students were able to correctly identify feelings, use mental health terminology, and knew how to advocate for themselves and others. Students reported feeling more at ease without shame or embarrassment.
Confidence comes from knowing
Butterworth noticed a positive change as well. “My students grew in confidence and were more willing to express themselves and talk more honestly about their feelings. Students became more open, not only with me, but with each other.”
Nait Kassi credits the in-class group dynamic for making HeadsUp! so successful.
“Hearing from each other what bullying does and how it can affect someone, going into a conversation and understanding what mental health means in different settings and cultures is what students need to change pathways at school and life.
“Teaching mental health literacy when kids are young acts as a preventative measure. We’ll have a generation of kids that is empowered to deal with issues as opposed to kids that turn into [traumatised] adults who suffer in silence,” Nait Kassi said.
After her experiences in Heads Up!, Butterworth thinks that mental health literacy programmes should be embedded in the curriculum to benefit both teachers and students. She explains: “My involvement with this programme has upskilled me as a teacher. I now feel that I could confidently deliver lessons on mental health to my classes in the future.
“If the overall goals of a school are academic excellence and for students to be the absolute best that they can be, mental health literacy programmes should be just as important as subjects like math, science, and English.
“If students feel happy and safe — or have learnt strategies to be able to cope if they don’t — then they are able to take risks and achieve their fullest potential.”