Essential English- Learning about Mental Health, wellness strategies, stress, anxiety and depression

A lesson designed for use in a 12 Essential English classroom in Queensland, Australia as part of Unit 3: “Language that influences.” During this unit students learned how to create and shape perspectives on community, local and global issues in texts. Their assessment at the end of this unit was to write a 4-6 minute persuasive multimodal (speech) to be delivered live or pre-recorded about an issue of their choice.

1. A PPT which structures the lesson. It began with a think, pair, share activity to define mental health. This is followed by some online definitions from the WHO and Beyond Blue & a 2-minute viewing activity. Some information about the benefits of staying well are provided. Students are then to brainstorm some strategies they could use to maintain good mental health. There are some tips that I’ve saved over the years from various places (e.g. Headspace) which I have scanned and use as discussion prompts. Then there is some information about stress and some stress triggers and anxiety and some symptoms of anxiety. There is a visual infographic from Beyond Blue containing statistics about Australians impacted by anxiety or depression. This is followed by a viewing activity about Post Natal depression from ABC iView (an episode from Season 7 of “You Can’t Ask That”).