CMHA National Publishes Mental Health High School Curriculum Guide

The Canadian Mental Health Association-National recently published their Mental Health and High School Curriculum Guide: Understanding Mental Health and Mental Illness. The resource was created to support educators within Canadian secondary schools to address issues of mental health and mental illness in the classroom.

The guide includes six lesson plans, complete with activity worksheets and handouts. Each lesson is designed to fit into 50 minutes of classroom time. Flash and video presentations accompany the lessons. The videos were created in partnership with Laing House, a community support centre for young adults, ages 17-24, who are living with serious mental illnesses such as psychosis or mood disorders.

The guide is designed primarily for use in Grades 9 through 12. CMHA worked with Curriculum Services Canada to ensure that the lessons were suitable for health and physical education courses across the country. The guide also fits well with other curriculum areas, including personal development, family living, child studies, psychology and sociology. The project was funded by the Government of Canada’s Social Development Partnerships Program.

This project builds on an earlier initiative by CMHA called Mental Health and High School, which focused on providing high school students, their educators and parents with information about adolescent mental health problems and mental illness and how they can affect young people’s learning.

For more information and to download the complete Mental Health and High School Curriculum Guide, visit www.cmha.ca/highschoolcurriculum. Resources from the Mental Health and High School project are available at www.cmha.ca/highschool.

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