Students at Eaton School are ending the stigma and are being creative while learning how to deal with stress, anxiety and other circumstances that disrupt mental wellness.

Nichole Bredy is a teacher at Eaton School and shared they noticed that students were sometimes getting stressed from exams or they were facing other adversities. Following open discussions regarding brain health and mental wellness, they decided to take action.

“When we get hurt, when we scrape our arm or get a cut, we put a band-aid on it and we really wanted to teach the students that although it may not be a band-aid, we still need to take care of our brain and our mental wellness.”

From those conversations, Bredy and her students decided to take things one step further and make Panic, Anxiety and Stress Support kit, or PASS kit, to provide students with various coping mechanisms when stress arises in their life.

Bredy explained the kits included literature on identifying and coping with stress an anxiety and also hand-picked, or for some, hand-made, items chosen by the students themselves. She shared the kits were for the students and wanted them to be from the students, stating that everyone has different things that may help them relax under stressful circumstances.

Some items the students added into the kits included:
• homemade aromatherapy play-dough
• hand-dried and homemade tea bags
• a playlist of engine and dirt bike sounds
• a list of sports drills
• motivational and inspirational quotes

Each student had the opportunity to add something that they were passionate about and helped them feel better when circumstances in life otherwise were bogging them down.

Not only will Bredy’s class get to reap the benefits of the PASS kits, they are sharing their knowledge of mental wellness with others throughout the school as well.

The students are working to complete enough kits to hand out to every student in Grade 7 through 12. Bredy said she hopes they will not only help the students when feeling stressed, but also lead into ending the stigma surrounding mental health.