What is the school project about?

The Schizophrenia Fellowship of NSW Inc has over the last 16 years supported consumers and families of people living with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.

The School Education Project is the first specifically funded strategy of the Schizophrenia Fellowship of NSW Inc that targets adolescent mental health issues through school communities. The project has built on the work that has previously been done by the Fellowship in order to path a direction for the future.

Research was undertaken in the initial stages of the project. The findings revealed that there is a gap in support services for schools dealing with schizophrenia. The research also uncovered the experiences of teachers and school communities with mental health education.

The School Education Project developed the School Education Kit. This kit is targeted at teachers by providing them with a myriad of resources to use in and out of the classroom. The Kit is designed to be flexible as well as comprehensive. It has three main focuses; welfare, educational opportunities and community perspectives (stigma education).

There is much work that needs to be done to support our young people and school communities with schizophrenia and mental health education. A strategic vision for the project has been devised and will be carried out depending on the attainment of funding.

Future directions include the promotion of the School Education Kit, development of ongoing support mechanisms for schools, linkages with state wide initiatives and to a commitment to continual research.

School Education Kit

The Kit is targeted at teachers who have not had previous experience with teaching mental health education. It includes:

• Lesson plans (52 page book). There are six lessons that come complete with activity sheets and resources. The Lesson Plans include a variety of activities and educational opportunities that are flexible to cater for the needs of all year groups (although targeted at Year 7-10). They include:
  • Lesson One: What do you think about Mental Illness?
  • Lesson Two: How do I feel about Mental Illness?
  • Lesson Three: Learning about the illnesses and having fun!
  • Lesson Four: Stigma.
  • Lesson Five: Let's do something about it
  • Lesson Six: Wrap up.
• Information Pack for teachers (13 pages, 7 brochures, 1 poster). This section is designed to offer teachers background information on adolescent mental health including fact sheets, website lists and brochures that identify signs and symptoms.

The pack includes:

• SFNSW brochures (Schizophrenia: What it is, Sunflower Club, Carers Support Unit, SFNSW membership brochure)
• Fact Sheet: Young people and Mental Health
• Fact Sheet: Mental Health, Drug use and Adolescents
• Fact Sheet: What to look out for
• SANE Australia: Something is not quite right brochure
• National Mental Health Strategy brochures (Mental illness - the facts, What is Depression? What are Anxiety Disorders? What is Schizophrenia? What is Bipolar Mood Disorder? What is an Eating Disorder?)
• Getting in Early: a framework for early Intervention. NSW Health
• Web list of resources about Mental Health
• SFNSW Poster: Out of the Darkness and into the light
• Evaluation FormSFNSW Annual report.

Buy this kit

The Kit integrates three important principals. These are:

• Welfare
• Educational opportunities
• Community perspectives.

They are all important, complimentary concepts that provide an integrated and holistic program for students. All the strategies aimed to complement and link with activities that schools are already doing, this was achieved by being flexible and offering a range of options.

Welfare:
Mental health education is looking after the welfare of people's health and providing them with the knowledge and skills to recognise signs and symptoms.

The welfare component aims to raise concerns about mental illness and to promote early detection, referral and diagnosis.

Educational opportunities:
In order to be able to integrate mental health education into the classroom (considered the most effective place for impact on students), the resources provided are conducive to an educational setting i.e. including assessable activities that promote student skill development.

This component aims to provide educational experiences which raise awareness and understanding in the classroom and to decrease the stigma associated with schizophrenia.

Community Perspectives:
Combined with information on the signs and symptoms of illnesses, mental health education needs to be linked with an understanding of the effects of stigma. The community perspective component encourages the students to look outward at the views of their community to understand the devastating effects of stigma and importantly, what they can do to help to decrease it. This helps to create awareness of the experiences of people living with and caring for mental illness.

The inclusion of the community perspective component aims to draw attention to the effects of stigma and to promote the school as a supportive environment in which to discuss mental health issues. It also provides the opportunity for students to be proactive in decreasing stigma.

Other resources:
The School Education Project recommends two exceptional resources that can be used by teachers and parents. They both discuss mental illness in young people's language.

• Stigma: (Royal College of Psychiatrists). A 12 min video provides a concise look at the main issues of stigma associated with mental illness. It explains what it is and how it works. Excellent classroom resource. Buy this item.
• Changing Minds. Mental health: what it is, what to do and where to go. CD ROM: (Royal College of Psychiatrists). Interactive experience that looks at mental illness through people's stories, doing stress tests, mental health quiz etc. Comes with a teacher's guide and ideas for the classroom. This CD ROM covers mental health issues most pertinent to young people such as eating disorders, addiction, stress, depression, Schizophrenia and self-harm. Buy this item.

(This article was published in the Schizophrenia Fellowship's journal FOCUS June 2003)

The School Education Project has revealed that teachers in high schools need easily digestible information about mental health for them and their students. The School Education Kit addresses this need by providing six comprehensive lesson plans complete with handouts and additional resources.

There is a growing expectation from the community that schools will deal with adolescent mental health issues; however, many teachers feel that it is a specialized field that goes beyond their training. Caroline Vadala, a high school teacher says, "Although the issues are important, I would be hesitant to teach mental health education because I feel I have not had enough education myself."

The research completed for the School Education program indicates that this is a commonly shared feeling amongst high school teachers.

The School Education Kit provides background information for teachers to read before they teach their classes. The lesson plans have been designed to be taught by people without specialised mental health training, so they are very accessible to teachers.

The lessons plans encourage students to discuss the existence of stigma as well as providing information about specific illness. "You can't understand what people living with mental illness experience without talking about the effects of stigma" says Felicity Zadro, Project Officer for Schools Education Program, "The lesson plans aim to engage the students in education not only about the signs and symptoms of mental illness but how their community perceives people who experience them."

The School Education Program was promoted during Schizophrenia Awareness Week and it received a good response. Several schools helped out on the shopping mall stalls during SAW, and several more schools bought and used to Kit in the classroom, at assembly's and for mental health days. Due to its flexibility, the Kit is being used in numerous ways. For more information or to order a program please email Felicity Zadro at felicity@sfnsw.org.au or Sue Sacker sue@sfnsw.org.au

Any Questions?

If you have any more questions, or would like support in teaching the School Education Kit, please do not hesitate to contact:

Sue Sacker
Director-Projects
sue@sfnsw.org.au