10 February 2021
This term students in Year 11 and Upper Sixth have been invited to attend an online seven-week anti-anxiety workshop run by Miss Whitworth, Assistant Head of Sixth Form. With anxiety in young people on the rise, it has never been more important for students to start prioritising their mental health and get proactive about protecting it. Miss Whitworth is a Youth Mental Health First Aider, and the workshop is based around this training as well as the ideas of Dr Pooky Knightsmith, a mental health educator, speaker and author.
The sessions are designed to help students learn and practise strategies to help them cope with day-to-day stress and worry, through to full anxiety. This week’s session focused on creating a capacity for calm, to make it easier to return to calmness when we begin to feel anxious. Future sessions will explore taking control of our worries, reframing our negative thoughts, embracing a more positive mindset and riding the wave of anxiety.
Following feedback from the course, we will look to roll this out to other year groups in the future