NEWS PHOTO EMMA BENNETT
Grade Four students at St. Francis Xavier School wear hats to school to show support for mental health on Wednesday, May 1, 2019. Staff and students in the Medicine Hat Catholic schools were wearing hats to help raise awareness of the importance of mental health.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
Students and staff across Alberta donned all sorts of hats Wednesday as part of Mental Health Awareness Week.
Danielle Schaitel, a Community Coming Together wellness facilitator at St. Francis Xavier School, says the hats are a light-hearted way of drawing attention to the serious issue of mental health, which affects everyone, whether they’re aware of it or not.
“It’s just as important to take care of our mental health as it is our physical health,” said Schaitel. “By wearing a hat and talking about that, it helps to reduce the stigma of people potentially having mental health problems or mental illnesses, and just gets us talking about it and normalizing mental health.”
Each Catholic school in Medicine Hat has a CCT wellness facilitator like Schaitel, who visits each class for a period every week.
“Our role is to get people as young as pre-school, all the way up to Grade 12, talking about their mental health, so they understand their own mental health and they start learning skills so that they can more easily deal with problems as they arise,” she said.
“We all have difficult times in our lives … If we have the skills and the tools to help us through those difficult times, then our mental health can stay healthier.”
Principal Nick Gale says a challenge is to “provide strategies on a universal level to absolutely every single student.”
He said the students are “always extremely excited to see” Schaitel, who he says does a great job of shaping the discussion for the kids with hands-on activities.
Keeping with the hat theme, Schaitel had the students make their own hats at the beginning of the school year to illustrate the way their brains work.
“A lot of the times with mental health, (we’re) working on re-framing how we view mental health in our community and in society,” Gale said, framing mental wellness as part of an overall approach to health.
“Just like you take care of your body, you take care of your mental health as well.”
In the spirit of mental wellness, CCT is hosting the sixth annual Move for Mental Health event at Kin Coulee Park on Saturday. Registration begins at 1 p.m. and people begin running (or walking) at 2:15 p.m.
