Fighting Stigma and Creating a Culture of Self Care

In its second year at Greenwood, the Jack Chapter has been hard at work promoting mental health. This year, they have focused on raising awareness about mental health, reducing the associated stigma, and educating students about self care techniques.

The Jack Chapter has run several major initiatives so far this year. They coordinated a guest speaker and ran events for Bell Let’s Talk to raise awareness and encourage discussion. They have also been running a campaign called “Humans of Greenwood,” which spotlights different Greenwood students and their experiences with mental health, both positive and negative. It allows students a forum to speak openly, and shows them that their peers have similar experiences.

In November, the Jack Chapter ran a Self Care month, where they ran a number of events and initiatives focused on teaching students about the need for self care, and strategies they can try themselves. The emphasis on self care takes this knowledge about mental health issues further, and empowers students to take control of their own mental health.

The Jack Chapter has been promoting self care strategies as a proactive way for students to manage their day to day mental health. Taking care of your mental health and using strategies to deal with stress before it becomes overwhelming.

To this end, they recently released a new guide on Groodle (the school’s online learning platform) called “How to Know When to Reach Out.” This document outlines the spectrum of mental health, and gives examples of when self care is appropriate, and when outside help is needed. It is designed to help students recognize when they should reach out for help managing their mental health. It also contains suggested ways to open those conversations.

Just before March Break, they organized a “gratitude letter” writing session, prompting students to reflect on the people and things in their lives that they are grateful for. This is an example of proactive self care — taking a chance to mentally refresh before diving into the next term.

Students can look forward to more Jack Chapter initiatives in the final term, as May 7 to 11 is Mental Health Week at Greenwood. The Jack Chapter is preparing a full roster of activities to continue teaching mental health management and working to raise awareness about mental health.