From the Wellness Centre

Hello Dear Great Southern Grammar Community 😊

This final Anchor offering for 2023 comprises several juicy and informative sections: from a recent campaign fostering mental health in youth, to my latest fascination and learning from Ed Yong’s An Immense World, and then to rippling forth and glimmer with kindness, as well as a list of relevant links for maintenance of Mental Health for families. This is topped off by a fabulous Commencement Address by Illinois Governor Pritzker to students at North-West University, the message of which is that KINDNESS IS INTELLIGENCE. But many of you might know that already.

Mental Health Commission WA

The latest Mental Health Commission WA campaign has been running since September and will continue into July 2024.

Rationale:

Recent Western Australian data indicates young adults (aged 18-24 years) are significantly worse-off among a range of mental health and wellbeing indicators compared to other age groups.
Three-quarters experience low to moderate levels of mental wellbeing, and more than half experience high or very high levels of psychological distress.
Despite most young adults being able to name at least one self-care behaviour that can protect and promote their mental health and wellbeing (such as engaging in regular exercise, eating well and meditating), very few reported that they were doing these things on a regular basis.
In response to this, the Think Mental Health program undertook a comprehensive formative research and development process to produce a new mental wellbeing public education campaign, targeted specifically to Western Australians aged 18-24 years (young adults).

Campaign objectives:

Increase the proportion of young adults who:

Trial new actions to protect their mental health and wellbeing.
Undertake actions regularly to protect and promote their mental wellbeing.
Feel confident in their ability to maintain their mental health and wellbeing.

Details/ media:

The campaign includes a series of 6-10 second videos from the perspective of young adults who are engaging in a range of activities known to improve wellbeing. This includes activities that foster connection (e.g. spend time with friends) and meaning (e.g. volunteering) and elevate mindset (e.g. mindfulness) and lifestyle (e.g. spending time in nature). Digital platforms (i.e. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and YouTube) are being used to provide widespread exposure to the campaign message across the state. You can view the short clips here: Find your way to okay - YouTube There are additional campaign materials such as posters/social media tiles and audio excerpts that can be found within the Campaign Toolkit document found on the website (linked). You can also find more details here: Find Your Way to Okay | Think Mental Health (thinkmentalhealthwa.com.au)

An Immense World

The Pulitzer prize-winning author Ed Yong, has just won The Royal Society Science book prize for An Immense World. (Yong’s first book was I Contain Multitudes which you might remember.) This astonishing book reveals the weird and mysterious ways animals sense their environments and asks questions such as “why do dogs become more optimistic after two weeks of plentiful sniffing?; “why do scallops have 200 eyes yet their brains are rudimentary?”. The premise of this engaging and compelling read can be summarised thus: how radical empathy can uncover the forces that have driven evolution and can teach us new ways to engage. Yong asserts that we are so “trapped in our sensory bubbles”, being deeply embedded in our methods of experiencing the world that we unthinkingly impose our perspective on other creatures. These sensory bubbles, referred to as “Umwelts” by Baltic-German zoologist Jakob von Uexkull, provide a wonderful metaphor for how we live our lives – within little spheres or silos of protection peopled by our carefully chosen “tribes”. Of course, our brains are wired this way, for pair bonding and species promulgation. Yong’s book challenges us, by a literary technique of defamiliarization in which he avers that our lack of understanding of the sensory world of other animals is potentially and now proven to be destructive. I commend this book as a 21st Century challenge for us to develop skills of radical empathy and perspective-taking for not only non-human creatures, but for our brothers and sisters with whom we share this sacred land.

Glimmers and Moments of Awesomeness

At yesterday’s Secondary School Awards Ceremony during her Acknowledgement of Country, Rachael Colmer spoke of her profound moment of communion with a Wedge Tail Eagle during a recent trip to Perth; which for me, highlighted the deep connection to country of our Indigenous peoples, of which I yearn to understand more. I consider Rachael to be my North Star and teacher in so many realms of my life, and am inspired by her example of that transcendent connection with the natural world, to continue to notice the glimmers, to relish those moments of awe, to possibly truly understand that we are all connected with each other and to country, that we are more than the sum of our parts. Radical empathy, acts of kindness, fostering awareness and just noticing and listening with our whole body, will increase oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin, those neurochemicals which are necessary for healing, growth and compassion.

Kindness

You might have noticed that the sections of this epistle are joined by the silver thread of being our best selves and making time to connect with self, others and our environments. I hope you enjoy the following two links on kindness: the Commencement Address by Illinois Governor Pritzker to students at North-West University, the message of which is that KINDNESS IS INTELLIGENCE, and a short companion film by Simon Sinek which explores how acts of kindness and witnessing acts of kindness create exponentially healthy economies of scales of humanity. It’s brilliant.

Also, the links below might be useful for holiday reference for families and communities:

I wish you and your multifaceted and differently shaped families a connected and nourishing holiday season. Feel the vibes, enjoy the glimmers, be kind and continue to be awestruck and a little awe-inspiring too. Be your best self!

Ms Sheryl Moncur | School Counsellor and Teacher