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Youth & School

Mental Health 201: Years 10-12

Addresses stigma and promotes help seeking through the power of lived experience story sharing.

  • Audience

    Year 10-12

  • Format

    Classroom

  • Course Fee

    Free to ACT schools

  • Duration

    1 hour

  • Class size

    30ppl max

The details

Mental Health 201

Mental Health 201 addresses stigma and help-seeking through two powerful lived experience stories shared by MIEACT volunteer educators. This program is designed for older students and allows for a more critical look at the impacts of stigma and importance of early help seeking. Students are given access to in-depth mental health stories which have been carefully curated to be age-appropriate and safe for students.

By the end of this session participants will:

  • understand the negative consequences of stigma and the effects individual and communities’ views on mental health have on help seeking;
  • describe various signs and symptoms of mental illness and identify concerns in themselves and others;
  • analyse the power of real-life stories of people living with or looking after someone with a mental illness and reflect on how this insight could guide their own self-care and help-seeking practices;
  • identify, analyse and critique a wide range of strategies that are both helpful and unhelpful for good mental health and positive self-care behaviour;
  • articulate, plan and implement strategies for managing their own mental health;
  • identify where to go for help.

This program is mapped to the Australian Curriculum

Year 10

  • ACPPS093
  • ACPPS095
  • ACPPS090
  • ACPPS094
  • ACPPS098

Year 11, 12

  • Behavioral Science
  • Psychology

Addressing stigma and promoting help-seeking

We deliver over 130 sessions on stigma and mental illness each year to ACT Secondary Schools and Colleges. This is our flagship program and has been delivered in the ACT for over 25 years.

97% of student participants would recommend this session to a friend.

“It was very informative and enlightening and it gave me perspective as well. It was extremely useful, especially with the other personal experiences.” – Student, 14 years

Participants identified the use of personal stories within the session to be of most impact. With 96% identified their understanding of stigma had increased “Moderately” (26%), “Significantly” (52%) or “Extremely” (18%). And 98% more likely to seek help.

“The session helped me to understand that there is so much stigma around the issues and why that is so. It helped me to get as deeper understanding and ability to ask for help if I need it.” – Student, 14 years

“The session wasn’t overly complicated with statistics but it was mainly people’s stories which is more meaningful and personal.” – Student, 16 years