Mental Health continues to be a top priority for employers and employees across the country. Organizations have an opportunity to move toward a proactive approach to support teachers, administrators and staff by incorporating a mindset of mental fitness. Mental fitness is a combination of activities, habits, and attitudes that contribute to overall emotional health and wellness. Like physical fitness requires activity to get and stay fit and prevent health risks, mental fitness means actively doing things to manage and respond to stress and keep our emotions and mental state healthy. We will focus on how incorporating mental fitness into your organization’s culture can lead to greater workplace well-being, satisfaction and safety.
Building Community, showing empathy and a degree of self-disclosure is key to earning the trust of families to understand, see the benefits of and consent to counseling and mental health services for their students. Showing how at Cerritos we have used parent workshops, presentations, and Wellness Room visits we have seen great strides in getting parents on board with mental health services and helping to break the stigma of these important servives. We educate families by providing key facts and data about mental health, describe the response to intervention and 3 tiers of mental health supports at our site, we allow for open communication, address their concerns directly, highlight positive aspects of seeking help, and community engagement. We provide a tour of our Student Wellness Room so they parents can see what we are doing to help support mental health and social emotional learning. As a community school we have partnered with local mental health agencies to bring the mental health services to our student at our school site. We also link and refer tier three cases with wrap around services if needed.
