UNPACKING POSITIVE MENTAL HEALTH AND WELLBEING
Positive mental health and wellbeing is important for your child’s healthy development and learning. It supports them to manage the normal challenges of life.
Environments, experiences, relationships and individual characteristics all contribute to mental health and wellbeing.
For children and teens, wellbeing is supported when they:
- feel valued, loved and safe
- have their basic material needs met
- have physical, mental, emotional and social health
- can learn (in and outside the classroom)
- participate in decision-making
- are connected to their community
- have a positive sense of identity and culture.
MENTAL HEALTH EXISTS ON A CONTINUUM
It can be helpful to think of mental health and mental ill-health as existing along a continuum.
We all move along the continuum as we face challenges and situations that test our capacity to cope and change our mental health. Our mental health can change slowly or quickly.
Most people will experience changes in their mental health at some point during their lifetime. Social, emotional and environmental factors all influence our position along the continuum. Learn more about the mental health continuum.
Even if someone isn’t experiencing mental ill-health, that doesn’t mean their mental health is flourishing. Alternatively, it is possible to be diagnosed with a mental illness and still feel well and function effectively in many aspects of life.