Wellbeing Peer Mentors

Wellbeing Peer Mentors at BHASVIC

Each year a BHASVIC works with a group of A2 students who

Advice from specialist organisations

There is a range of material available online to help support young people’s mental health and wellbeing at this time. We believe the following are of particular relevance to our students:

Mental health charity MIND have produced a comprehensive advice page
Charity Young Minds have produced information focused particularly on anxiety
The Mental Health Foundation are working closely with Public Health England and have advice around who you can contact to get help

At the core of advice around wellbeing at this time is to ensure you maintain connections with others, develop a healthy routine, avoid speculation and consider your news sources and engagement with social media carefully.

What works for our students?

Our last two student ‘Emotional Health and Wellbeing’ surveys have identified the following five things as having the most positive impact on a student’s wellbeing:

Listening to music
Friendships and socialising
Good quality sleep
Watching films or TV
Managing my work well

We would encourage all students to consider this as they plan their routines and adapt to remote working. For instance:

It might be a good time to make some more playlists for different moods or times of the day.
Ensure that you are finding ways to keep in touch with your friends and share experiences, but keep to the rules about social distancing: no bars, pubs, clubs or face-to-face contact for now.
Sleep thrives on constancy so try and go to bed and wake up at the same time each day and stick to your usual college routine.
Give yourself time to unwind and be distracted with a boxset or film.
Don’t forget the satisfaction and pride you feel when you have managed your work and other responsibilities well.

12 Rocks of Wellbeing

Our recent work with Andrew Wright highlighted the ’12 Rocks’ that enable us to maintain positive wellbeing. The rocks are:

Good sleep
Exercise
Eating the right food and drinking the right amount of water
Mindfulness
Mind wandering
Being aware, accepting & sharing emotions
Walking outside in nature
Listening to music
Connecting meaningfully with family & friends
Gratitude and Kindness
Engaging with your life’s purpose
Learning, playing, creating

Not all of these will be easy to fulfil over the next few weeks and months but we encourage students to try and engage with each one every day where possible. A presentation outlining the neuroscience behind these rocks with more information, video links and practical ideas can be found HERE and a short YouTube video that explores anxiety in response to the current situation can be found HERE.

Wellbeing Peer group

This year the college has run a wellbeing peer mentoring group who worked with a range of professionals and college staff to develop ideas and resources to support BHASVIC students’ wellbeing. They recently launched an Instagram page containing content on a range of wellbeing and mental health issues and will try to keep this updated over the next for weeks and months.

We hope you find the above useful. We will continue to share advice and support for students as the situation develops and encourage you to stay in touch, ask questions and share concerns.

PLEASE IGNORE THIS FORM!! hope you find the above useful. We will continue to share advice and support for students as the situation develops and encourage you to stay in touch, ask questions and share concerns.