Community Feature: Peace of Mind

Community Feature:

PEACE OF MIND

Hi CIS! We are Peace of Mind (POM), CIS’ mental health advocacy group. We hope to raise awareness in our school community by creating a safe space for everyone to learn and share about mental health. We aim to implement different educational and support-based programs to encourage a more extensive understanding, and break the unspoken stigma around mental health through starting more conversations. Through the establishment of POM, we’ve been able to gather a group of like-minded students to work together. And during the process of researching different trends and illnesses, we’ve been able to expand our knowledge on the topic individually. A big part of our mission is to exercise empathy as we truly believe that spreading compassion and kindness is the most effective way of building a collectively-enjoyable CIS community.

One of the biggest concerns that parents, teachers, and students likewise share, is stress. It’s easy to overlook the stress indications that our body is telling us. For example, sacrificing sleep has weaved itself into a part of IB culture. And it’s through constant reinforcements that students are finally becoming more aware of their health needs and how seemingly-insignificant habits can truly hinder their capabilities, both inside and outside the classroom.

This school year, our team at POM has been focusing on a variety of projects to further improve our school’s awareness of mental health. We started off the year with the launch of our website (www.peaceofmindhk. org). In doing so, we hope to have created an easily-accessible hub for mental health resources curated by our members, and also exhibit our past initiatives. During our annual mental health week in October,

we invited guest speaker Aaron Robbie, from Talking Mental, to host a school-wide assembly about the mental health situation in Hong Kong, and his personal experiences. We also recently collaborated with the CIS Secondary Library to compile a list of well informed books about mental health and psychology. Furthermore, we have executed other more targeted projects such as year group assemblies for Years 8 and 11, a collaboration with issue 23 of Scribbles magazine and a collaboration with the Gender and Sexuality Alliance (GSA).

Our first two years of advocacy has been an incredibly gratifying experience, and we’re so excited to continue our journey promoting mental health in Hong Kong. We have so much in store for the rest of the year, so stay tuned and follow us on Instagram at

@peaceofmindhk!

“Everyone struggles. Be kind and love yourself.”

Love, Adelaide and Philippa on behalf of Peace of Mind