Promoting Student Well

Promoting Student Well-being in a Fun and Engaging Manner

By James Broadhurst and Charlie Golsby, Year 13

LETS, short for Let’s Erase the Stigma, is a student run CAT club at Bangkok Patana which aims to erase the stigma surrounding mental health, through raising awareness and promoting well-being. We aim to do this in a manner relevant to concerned students, via fun and playful media. The club meets every Thursday, during lunch, to come up with ways to provide the student body with the necessary information to nurture their own mental health, as well as information to raise awareness about mental health issues. As our academics, friendships and daily lives may be stressful, we find it important to be an approachable, compassionate and committed member of the Patana community.

Unsurprisingly, the Coronavirus had an impact on our club and the school. Being unable to pursue academics at school may have been disorientating and stressful for some. Hence, we found that it was of paramount importance to continue our well-being aims during lockdown. We have to

accept that such uncertainties are part of the ‘new norm’ and thus we must be prepared for it. Over time, we would like to help people make this transition with more ease and less worries.

Now, back at school and in our final year at Bangkok Patana, we wanted to get LETS off to a flying start. With lockdown and online learning behind us (hopefully!) we planned to help students to re-acclimate to student life on campus, including the added safety restrictions, such as masks and temperature scans. In order to increase the size of the club, and to help stir support for our cause, we participated in the CAT/CAS Fair. This year, we were delighted to have more new members than ever before, particularly in the lower half of the Secondary School; this is very encouraging, as it means our message and aims are being heard.

Our stall at the CAT/CAS Fair took advantage of the current craze surrounding TikTok and took to the Lounge

with an activity to gauge how students of varying ages feel about their mental health. Our most profound takeaway from this experience was an appreciation of the necessity of an established and maintained environment for caring for student mental health. The school environment can feel full of pressure and we want to alleviate some of the pressures Secondary students of all ages may feel. This only increases exponentially as students move through the years and LETS values The Hub tremendously as a place to let these pressures out. The Hub itself is a lovely place to relax with friends at lunch time or indulge in alone time; it is open during lunch, on the second floor of the Secondary Library, and we look forward to seeing you there. The counsellors are always nearby to support you in case things get too intense. A video highlighting this can be found here.

We held our yearly event: ‘LETS Be a Kid Again’, which coincides every year with World Mental Health Day. During Lunch, we prepared activities that students could take part in, that pertain to the issue of mental health and how we can improve our own well-being. Moreover, we displayed television shows from our childhood, like Phineas and Ferb and SpongeBob SquarePants. Our aim was to get students to forget their worries for a moment and focus on their youth. With the pressures of the International Baccalaureate, (I) GCSEs, and Key Stage 3 exams, we wanted to provide a brief escape and bring back fond memories from simpler times. Much like last year, our event was successful involving a larger share of the Secondary School; we received immense positive feedback and increased awareness surrounding our club and the issues of mental health.

Being a part of LETS in the past, I always felt that we could’ve done more. The short downfall of LETS was disheartening, as our presence amongst the school community dwindled. Taking over LETS in Year 11, I wanted to remind the student body that our mental health should be looked after as much as our physical health. We are constantly looking for new ways to engage the student body, and right now, we are looking into integrating our messages with TikTok to help aggregate awareness from a wider percentage of students. In such uncertain times, we would like to ensure that students, parents, teachers and staff understand the significance of positive mental health practices. If you would like to be a part of this, LETS is a club open to all, so please do not hesitate to contact us. We hope to see you in LETS soon to see how we can continue to erase the stigma!