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Mental Health & Wellbeing Support
This page contains information on mental health and wellbeing support that we hope you will find useful. We are here to help, and we encourage you to reach out if you have concerns or questions about your child's emotional wellbeing or yourself.
We promote the 5 Ways to Wellbeing approach to support mental health and wellbeing. These are five simple actions that are known to improve both mental health and wellbeing, as promoted by the NHS and charities such as Mind.
These 5 ways to wellbeing are:
- Connect
- Be active
- Take notice
- Keep learning
- Give
What is Mental Health?
Mental health includes our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects how we think, feel, and act. It also helps determine how we handle stress, relate to others, and make choices. Mental health is important at every stage of life, from childhood and adolescence through to adulthood.
What is Wellbeing?
Well-being is defined as a sense of health and vitality that arises from your thoughts, emotions, actions, and experiences. When we have good well-being, we feel happy, healthy, socially connected, and purposeful most of the time.
Ways we support our children
We tailor our support for our children and young people according to their needs. As part of our ongoing plan, we continue to train staff to identify where pupils' mental health may need some additional help, both from our pastoral staff or access to external services. See below for some of the support available.
- CAMHS
- Service 6 - Happy Head programme
- GP
- Children's 0 - 19 team, including School Nurse team
- Wellbeing sessions with Happy Karen
- Jogo Behaviour Support
- Nurture Group
- Educational Psychologist
- Ask Normen
We provide the following wellbeing activities for our children and young people:
- Meet and Greet
- Pastoral support
- Drawing and Talking programme
- Protective Behaviours
- Emotion Coaching
Useful Websites to Help Support
A - Z guide to help your child with their feelings and behaviour, as well as mental health conditions and life events.
Advice to help you support children who may be experiencing depression, anxiety, suicidal feelings or self-harm
This team supports children and young people with emotional wellbeing difficulties and mental health conditions. It's referred to as "Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services" (CAMHS) .
Parents, carers, young people, and professionals can call the CAMHS/CYPMHS Consultation Line, 0800 170 7055 (Monday-Friday, 9am-4pm).
If you are in a crisis (at risk of self-harm or suicide), the CAMHS/CYPMHS Crisis Team is open 24/7 and can be accessed by calling 0800 170 7055.
Support for mental health in adults who live in the Wellingborough area, providing a safe, confidential and non-judgemental environment in which individuals can discuss any aspect of their life in the knowledge that they have been heard and understood.
Crisis cafés are open at 14 Havelock Street, Wellingborough, on Fridays 4-9pm and Saturdays 12-8pm. These have professional mental health workers, and they aim to support individuals to reduce any immediate crisis and have a safety plan.
Contact number: 01933 223591
The Difference between Mental Health and Mental Illness
Mental health and mental illness are not the same thing. Poor mental health and struggling to cope is also different from having a mental illness. A mental illness or mental health disorder is an illness that affects the way people think, feel, behave, or interact with others. There are many types of mental illnesses/ health disorders with different signs and symptoms.
Generally, the difference between poor mental health and mental illness is the nature of and degree to which the difficulties someone is experiencing is having on their wellbeing and functioning (socially, occupationally and academically). Mental illness typically has more of a significant detrimental impact across many areas of an individual’s life than episodes of poor mental health which may be situation specific or time limited.
Anyone of any age, gender, geographical background, race, ethnicity, class, background, religion, ability, appearance, culture, caste, education, economic status, spirituality, sexual orientation can experience mental illness.
Early Warning Signs
Not sure if you or someone you know is living with mental health problems? Experiencing one or more of the following feelings or behaviours can be an early warning sign of a problem:
Eating or sleeping too much or too little
Pulling away from people and usual activities
Having low or no energy
Feeling numb or like nothing matters
Having unexplained aches and pains
Feeling helpless or hopeless
Smoking, drinking, or using drugs more than usual
Feeling unusually confused, forgetful, on edge, angry, upset, worried, or scare
Yelling or fighting with family and friends
Experiencing severe mood swings that cause problems in relationships
Having persistent thoughts and memories you can't get out of your head
Hearing voices or believing things that are not true
Thinking of harming yourself or others
Inability to perform daily tasks like taking care of your kids or getting to work or school
Maintaining Positive Mental Health
Ways to maintain positive health include:
- Getting professional help if you need it
- Connecting with others
- Staying positive
- Getting physically active
- Helping others
- Getting enough sleep