Last Friday, South Orangetown Middle School hosted their first Mental Health Awareness Day event for students in recognition of Mental Health Awareness Month!
SOMS Prevention Counselor Bobbie-Angela Wong worked alongside SOMS administrators, teachers and staff to organize the multi-disciplinary event. “The purpose of our Mental Health Awareness Day is two-fold: to bring awareness to mental health as well as to provide opportunities for students to practice simple activities that reduce stress. While everyone has mental health, and yes, it differs from person to person, there is still such a big stigma. We hope that just by talking about the normalcy of mental health, it can help students break down the negative beliefs around mental health and also seek out help when needed,” explained Wong. “The activities that we hosted gave students examples of things they can continue to do outside of school to practice self-care. When students are extremely stressed out, it’s easy to forget to take a break and what they can do to relax. This event provided some simple, fun and easy reminders!”
Throughout the day, each grade level took turns going outside for a variety of wellness-inspired activities including a Wellness Walk, Tossing the Stigma games and a collaborative Express Your Stress painting. In their classrooms, students also had the opportunity to write gratitude letters and Positive Post-Its/SOMS Shoutouts as well as engage in trivia games inspired by SOMS and SOMS staff.