Wellbeing and mental health update

Below you will find the latest news and updates on wellbeing and mental health. If you have any questions about wellbeing or mental health please do not hesitate to get in touch with Mrs Cullen or Mrs Carella.

This week I discovered a great new podcast called ‘Dear Anxiety’. The podcast is hosted by Ed Crasnick, a comedian and writer, and Renee Jain, founder of a story-based approach to Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (GoZen!). Each episode tackles a different emotion - so far episodes have covered anger, worry, perfectionism and self-criticism. The podcast is suitable for adults and children to listen to and provides valuable research-based solutions to support mental wellbeing. The most recent episodes I listened to covered anger from a child and a parent perspective, providing both with strategies that they could use to manage and control their anger.

I particularly liked the ‘mind the gap strategy’, which encourages children to verbalise how they are feeling and what is happening in their body when they start to get angry, thereby activating the language part of the brain and reducing the intensity of emotions. By doing this they ‘mind the gap’ between their feelings of anger and their physical expression of this e.g. kicking, hitting, shouting.

Well worth a listen if you want some pointers to support the mental wellbeing of your family!

Have a restful weekend!

Mrs Cullen