Raising Awareness with a World Mental Health Day Assembly
5 World Mental Health Day Assembly Ideas
Everyone’s mental health is as important and unique as their physical health, but past stigma has limited people’s understanding.
Raising awareness about the significance of mental health involves teaching new generations about what good mental health looks like and how to ask for help.
In this article, we’ll offer some engaging mental health assembly ideas, including practising mindfulness, singing, connecting with nature, and even putting on a show!
Holding a World Mental Health Day Assembly
Alongside essential subject knowledge, schools play a major role in teaching children life skills and lessons. Mental health is integral to being happy and participating positively in society from day one, but it’s not always easy to manage or even talk about.
Plus, coming of age can be a particularly lonely time. Uncertain about whether their experiences are common or not, many children may retreat into themselves. One way to encourage openness is to talk through growing pains as a group at school.
This year, World Mental Health Day takes place on Friday, 10th October. A themed assembly is a wonderful way to broach the subject with pupils and introduce them to key concepts like regulating emotions, building relationships, and accepting ourselves and others.
Mental Health Assembly Ideas
1. Practise Mindfulness
Emotion is a complex topic, and many people struggle to accept and manage their feelings day to day. Mindfulness is a way to observe our current thoughts and emotions without judgment and to tune into our surroundings. There are many methods, from yoga to breathwork, but a moment of quiet meditation is an ideal introduction.
Try a short mindfulness exercise in your World Mental Health Day assembly. As challenging as quieting a whole room of children can be, many will undoubtedly benefit from a step-by-step tutorial! Instruct pupils to relax and pay attention to their breathing for 2–3 minutes, feeling the air move in and out of their lungs, while you play some quiet music.
What you’ll need:
● A calm environment
● A timer
● Soothing music
or
● A guided meditation, like those on the Headspace YouTube channel
2. Connect with Nature
As the nights draw in and the temperatures drop, it’s common to feel more downcast and withdrawn. To help pupils understand the connection between their environment and their mood, it may help to explain the ways in which access to nature contributes to our mental health in your assembly.
Depending on the size and location of your school, we appreciate that it may not be practical to take a hands-on approach, such as going on a group nature walk. Instead, you can use your mental health assembly to bring nature indoors! Ahead of time, gather an array of interesting leaves, twigs and stones to pass around during your assembly.
Invite students to carefully touch each object and observe its weight, shape, colour, texture and smell, before gently giving it to their neighbour. Toward the end, ask your students to share some of their observations about each type of object. Can they describe the colours of the leaves? Were the twigs rough or smooth? How heavy were the stones?
What you’ll need:
● A basket
● Leaves
● Twigs
● Small stones
● Flowers
● Pieces of bark
3. Promote Good Sleep Habits
Sleep can positively impact mental health by improving our ability to manage our emotions, behaviour, concentration and memory. So, it stands to reason that poor sleep can lead to people feeling low, anxious, irritable, confused, unable to concentrate and unable to manage their emotions.
Start your mental health awareness assembly by talking about sleep hygiene. For example, explain why it’s important to try to cut back on eating, drinking and using screens near bedtime, and to go to bed at a regular time each night. Then, test your students’ knowledge with a short quiz. Use existing resources from the BBC or Twinkl, or create your own!
What you’ll need:
● A smartboard or projector to display the quiz questions
● Answer sheets
● Pens
4. Talk about Loneliness
Loneliness can have a huge impact on our mental health. A mental health assembly is an ideal setting to talk generally to pupils about the people they can turn to for supportive relationships. Music famously helps us express complex emotions, so singing PSHE assembly songs can also get children thinking and talking about their feelings in an open and healthy way. Nurturing children’s connections to caregivers like mums and dads at home, trusted adults at school, and friends their own age can help keep loneliness at bay.
Help students visualise these links by creating a ‘web’ of connections. With everyone sitting in a big circle, start the web by holding the end of a ball of wool and naming someone you’re connected to. Then, gently toss the ball to a child in the circle. Whoever catches the ball holds onto a piece of wool, names someone they’re connected to — such as a parent or friend — and tosses the ball to someone else. Keep going until everyone has had a chance to share who they’re connected to. You should end up with a web of wool stretching across the circle.
What you’ll need:
● A large ball of brightly coloured wool or string
● Space to sit everyone in one large or several smaller circles
5. Stage a School Musical
Fun and engaging, our primary and secondary school musicals aim to impart valuable life lessons as well as drum up excitement. Music is a very effective way to get children thinking about deep topics like mental health. Pair catchy songs with a captivating story and relatable characters, and you’ve got the perfect way to help pupils relate to important messages!
● Identity and self-acceptance
In A-la-la-la-la-laddin, we follow the hero and the princess on their search for identity and self-acceptance. These intrepid characters teach us that it’s important to stick up for ourselves, follow our own path, and resist pressure from others about who we should be or what we should do. As children grow up and start to think more deeply about their differences, we should encourage them to take pride in their unique identities.
● Courage and curiosity
Wonderland The Musical is the perfect choice to teach children about the unpredictable nature of life. With her courage and curiosity, Alice is an inspiring character who shows us that it’s okay to feel frightened and overwhelmed sometimes, but that it’s possible to push through and adapt. Bravery is a big part of speaking up and asking for help with our mental health.
● Hardship and injustice
Studies have established a strong link between money and mental health. It’s no surprise that our home situation impacts the way we feel about ourselves, our community and our place in the world. What better musical to address these big thoughts than Looking Good, Robin Hood, where our band of brave, penniless heroes fight for justice for their entire town? Themes of prosperity and friendship are at the forefront of this heart-warming tale.
What you’ll need:
● One of our primary or secondary school musical packs
● Costumes
● Props
● Time to audition and rehearse
● Plenty of imagination!
Raise Awareness with a World Mental Health Day Assembly
There are so many interesting ways to celebrate World Mental Health Day and raise awareness among your pupils, from practising mindfulness to staging a production! If you’re planning to mark the occasion with music, we have plenty of material to put together a memorable mental health assembly for KS1 or KS2. Browse our range of assembly songs for KS1 and KS2 students, or get in touch with any questions.