Stress management initiative moves into Enid Bennett High
Published:Friday | June 23, 2023 | 1:21 AMRuddy Mathison/Gleaner Writer
THE MINISTRY of Health and Wellness, partnering with the Ministry of Education and Youth, has responded to the increased stress levels among students with a stress management initiative aimed at targeting those who are vulnerable.
Health and wellness minister, Dr Christopher Tufton, introduced the concept to students at Enid Bennett High School in Bog Walk, St Catherine, yesterday. The minister had introduced the initiative at five other schools in recent times.
Tufton underscored the importance of helping students who came out of the COVID-19 lockdowns with anti-social behavioural patterns.
“It’s another of our Ministry of Health in collaboration with the Ministry of Education interventions within the school system to help our students understand stress management and to provide some psychosocial support,” the health minister told The Gleaner after introducing the concept to students.
Apart from managing stress factors, Tufton said the enterprise would also help the students to manage distractions and negative energy.
“Today we say to the students, ‘You need to find your safe space’. A safe space is somewhere you can go get comfort, you can go to think, you can go to get advice, you can go to avoid conflict, and you can go to focus on the right things,” he noted.
He unveiled a wellness bench, a symbolic gesture, he said, that represents a safe space. Tufton also handed out stress balls, which are rubbery in texture and can be used to transfer negative energy and exercise the hands. In addition, he also introduced his signature exercise programme, ‘Jamaica Moves’, as part of the effort.
The impact of stress – and negative energy among students – on the health sector in the post-COVID era has manifested itself in the emergency rooms of hospitals where students are being treated for injuries inflicted by their peers, the minister related.
In the past week ,two high schools’ students, one from Cumberland High School in St Catherine and another from Oberlin High in St Andrew were badly wounded and hospitalised because of unresolved school conflicts.
Dr Judith Leiba, director of child and adolescent mental health in the Ministry of Health and Wellness, added another component to the stress management programme by facilitating a school check-in prior to students leaving for summer holiday.
“We want to check in with them. We want to give them points in terms of keeping mentally well for the holidays and to ensure that they come back to school in the best shape in September,” said Dr Leiba.
She alluded to evidence of an increase in the number of students who complained about being depressed, and anxious, some expressing suicidal ideation and some self-harming, coming out of the check-in intervention.
While he welcomed the initiative, principal of Enid Bennett High School, Patrick Phillips, acknowledged that stress is a reality of life, something that everyone goes through.
He noted that the programme would help the students to deal with conflicts as well as their situations and show them how to have a safe space where they can think situations through.