Mental Health Matters

DAIS students from grade 9, participated in 'Mental Health Matters', a Round Square discussion organized by the Belgrano Day School in Argentina on June 14th. The organisers implemented various ingenious approaches to quintessentially highlight participants' perspectives on mental health, using word clouds and discussions entailing elaborate explanations of views on mental health in the modern world. There was also a clever use of social media apps such as memes, Instagram posts, and TikTok reels, to bring out how the younger generation views and copes with mental health problems.

Participants then branched into a discussion entailing coping mechanisms and triggers for mental disorders. Finally, to more extensively understand the views of others, the participants were put into breakout rooms with smaller groups for a more interactive discussion based on a few questions penned by the organisers around coping mechanisms, triggers and pathologies. Towards the end, participants reflected on their learnings from the breakout rooms and their relationships with mental health.

Thus, the conference enabled attendees to expand their knowledge on various mental health issues and coping mechanisms and presented an opportunity for participants to talk about mental health openly. Furthermore, it reminded participants of the scale of these issues. It nurtured them so that they will be able to help their friends develop coping mechanisms or cure similar infirmities, providing a holistic educational experience for all those that attended.

Overall, it was a very enriching experience and exposed the participants to several interesting questions to reflect on regarding the future of jobs.