HELLO YELLOW: HNC GETS LOUD AND PROUD ABOUT THE SUBJECT OF MENTAL HEALTH 

Last week was World Mental Health Day and on Thursday 10 October our community turned yellow and stood together to demonstrate how it is good to talk, and that there should be no stigma attached to talking about our mental health.

As part of this, everyone was invited to join our Student Council and staff in the Junction to join the conversation and share their thoughts and words of advice. Given the positive impact physical activity can have on mental wellbeing, a rowing challenge provided a great conversation starter, as did the ‘Wear it Yellow’ pin badges which students could collect as a token of our thanks for sharing their thoughts, either via our questionnaire or our tree of advice. 

Almost 500 students opted to engage on the day by sharing their thoughts, and the results are now in:

  • 70% of our students felt social media was the most significant leading cause of poor mental health 
  • 54% of students said they felt that where people didn’t talk about mental health, this was because they felt uncomfortable about opening up 
  • 8 in 10 students said they knew where to access support, if needed 
  • Overwhelmingly, students stated that they felt physical activity was the number one way to enhance and protect mental wellbeing 

Students were also invited to share their words of advice to someone who might be struggling with their mental health and some of these messages included ‘Never be afraid to talk. No matter how low you feel, others will feel the same’, ‘your mental health is essential, take care and talk about your problems’ and ‘there is always light at the end of the tunnel’. Students also shared comments such as ‘we’ve all been there you are not alone’ and ‘speaking about your mental health does not make you weak.’ 

A photo gallery sharing a selection of images from the day can be viewed below. 

James Tindall, Faculty Lead, Enrich comments: “As a community we understand the importance of good mental wellbeing, and work to ensure our students not only understand how they can protect their own mental wellbeing, but the importance of talking if they do have any worries or concerns. We also work hard to ensure our students know how we can support them to develop the knowledge and resilience they need to deal with life’s ups and downs as they happen. The HNC World Mental Health Day was a positive opportunity to get talking about this critical topic, and explore some of the reasons we may not always speak out.” 

“Our quiz prompted some interesting discussions – for example, many students said that they believed that social media was a leading cause of poor mental health, but equally recognised that it is now a part of their daily lives, so there was some real debates about why we’d choose to be active on this. Our community really engaged in creating meaningful topics of conversation. There was some brilliant advice given by our students, and we’ll be looking at how we can share this and continue the conversation over the coming days and weeks!”

Further information about HNC’s Wellbeing advice can be found here.

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