Many schools celebrate Mental Health Awareness in May, but this month’s activities should go beyond bulletin boards. Meaningful Mental Health Awareness Month activities for school reduce stigma, build coping skills, and open conversations that last throughout the year.
Strategic, engaging activities for students vary from peer support groups and check-in circles to stress management workshops and guided grounding exercises. The right approach can elevate schools’ mental health awareness and practices.
This practical programming guide helps school social workers and youth program staff plan effective Mental Health Awareness Month activities.
Why Mental Health Awareness Month Matters in Schools
Mental Health Awareness Month was established in 1949 to support mental health awareness, wellness, and advocacy. Beyond the month’s celebrations, May is also a meaningful time to lead structured mental health programming, as it’s nearly the end of the school year. School case managers can reevaluate students’ needs and the school’s mental health support systems to make immediate changes and establish better practices for the next school year.
School social workers are uniquely positioned to coordinate things to do for Mental Health Awareness Month among teachers, counselors, and administrators. Potential benefits of celebrating Mental Health Awareness Month in schools include:
- Normalizing conversations about mental health without stigma
- Helping students and staff recognize early signals of mental health distress to strengthen early intervention
- Giving teachers the trauma-informed care practices and tools to recognize and properly address mental health
- Meeting students where they are developmentally to provide optimal support
- Connecting students and families to strategic and accessible resources
12 Mental Health Awareness Month Activities to Try This May
The best activities, practices, and coping strategies for students vary by age and developmental stage, along with each student body’s unique needs. Explore the top mental health awareness activities for elementary, middle school, and high school students below to maximize the impact of school case managers.
Elementary School Activities
- Feelings journals: These specialized journals help students track their emotions to bolster self-awareness and develop their own coping strategies. Guided feelings journals use prompts, structures, and color-coded grids to keep entries focused on emotional wellness.
- Classroom check-in circles: Group mental health check-ins give students and teachers opportunities to safely share their thoughts and feelings. Teachers can reduce stigma and build community to help students form relationships in early childhood mental health.
- Read-alouds about mental health: Reading aloud educational content on youth mental health can raise mental health awareness using accessible language and dependable sources, such as psychoeducation for kindergartners. The right read-alouds can strengthen coping skills, self-care, and stress management for students.
- Breathing and grounding exercises: Emotional regulation strategies, such as belly breathing and power hugs, let you teach students coping strategies while giving them opportunities to practice them. For example, the 5-4-3-2-1 technique is a sensory exercise that grounds students by making them aware of their surroundings. It challenges them to name five things they see, four things they can feel, three things they hear, two things they can smell, and one thing they can taste.
Middle School Activities
5. Peer support groups: Often operating like school clubs, middle school peer support groups let students share their mental and behavioral health experiences. This can promote coping skills and a greater sense of community among students.
6. Creative expression projects: Visual journeys, emotion-focused color maps, creative writing, and hands-on crafts give students fun, engaging outlets to express their feelings and emotions. They can then easily share their creations with one another to strengthen peer relationships and normalize emotion-based discussions.
7. Discussions about key topics: With a careful approach, school counselors and other staff can delve into key topics impacting students, such as the relationship between social media and stress. These conversations meet students at a developmental stage where peer relationships and identity are crucial.
8. Anonymous question boxes for sensitive topics: Whether it’s due to fear of repercussions, embarrassment, or any other reason, some students won’t openly share the top mental health concerns on their minds. Anonymous question boxes and surveys give students safe and accessible ways to ask for help or point out critical issues impacting themselves or others, which helps schools better recognize youth risk factors.
High School Activities
9. Student-led awareness panels: This peer-to-peer approach gives older students more autonomy while promoting a positive school climate. These activities can break down stigmas and build empathy by making students part of the conversation, ensuring key topics aren’t overlooked.
10. Mental health resource fairs: Students’ mental health needs and priorities can vary significantly, and not all of them will be upfront about their circumstances. Resource fairs promote coping strategies and mental health education and connect students with various counseling services, crisis support, and other resources that target specific needs.
11. Stress management workshops: Workshops let students practice coping, mindfulness, and emotional regulation techniques with direct support from school counselors and other professionals. This can help students build long-term resiliency while bolstering ownership of their own mental health.
12. Open conversations about therapy and seeking help: Open discussions can normalize and help students understand the importance of seeking help. This can reduce stigmas around therapy and make students more comfortable asking for help when they need it.
Showcasing Mental Health Awareness Month for the Entire School
Broader, school-wide programming can create a shared culture around mental health awareness. Check out these examples:
- Awareness walls and displays serve as artistic murals that cover key wellness topics to encourage widespread participation and make mental health terminology part of students’ daily lives. Students may even contribute to awareness walls, such as through art class projects.
- School-wide themes for each week of May let staff distinguish between key topics, such as personal wellness, community support, and destigmatization.
- Morning announcements can spotlight mental health topics in small doses every day. Rather than being shared in big weekly events or check-ins, mental health education becomes a brief part of schools’ daily routines.
- School-wide challenges encourage students to put their new wellness, coping, and positivity practices to the test, helping them become lasting habits. For example, schools could challenge students to compliment multiple people each day, post positive notes on a shared bulletin board, or take time to “detox” without phones or screens each day.
Approaching Sensitive Mental Health Conversations With Students
School social workers must facilitate conversations about mental health in a way that’s age-appropriate, trauma-informed, and not inadvertently harmful. The best strategies balance openness with appropriate professional boundaries. This requires a careful approach backed by years of experience and mental health education — which means you shouldn’t leave all the work to the teachers.
Trauma-informed care for students backed by the right social work tools can help staff create psychological safety and personalize experiences to each student’s unique needs. By tracking student case management plans, school counselors and social workers can respond appropriately when a student discloses something serious.
Involving Families and Caregivers for Mental Health Awareness
Parent workshops, informational nights, and take-home resources can bring families into the awareness effort, especially when using accessible language. These let you share tips for caregivers on how to continue mental health conversations at home. Schools can also offer guidance to connect families to community mental health resources when needed.
Coordinating Awareness Efforts Across School Staff
School social workers can lead coordination among teachers, counselors, administrators, and community partners using various strategies. For instance, they can establish shared activity calendars, clearly communicate roles and responsibilities throughout the month, and create simple tool kits for teachers to use in the classroom without specialized training.
School-focused case management software, such as Casebook, supports student case tracking, participation logging, and outcome documentation to make this even easier.
From Awareness to Action: Sustaining Mental Health Support in Schools
Mental Health Awareness Month activities for schools can build resilience and wellness while tearing down stigmas. May is an excellent month to reassess and relaunch your mental health efforts — both for the month and the next school year. Casebook helps school social workers stay organized, document student needs, and coordinate across staff.
Contact Casebook and book a demo to learn how this tool can support mental health awareness activities for students in May and beyond.