🧠✨ Leveling Up: A Look Inside Our Mental Health Training! ✨🧠

Hey everyone!  We just wrapped up an incredibly powerful and fun Mental Health Training session for our amazing teachers, and we’re so excited to share the highlights with you!

A huge thank you to our brilliant trainers, Sabina Baniya and Kapil Sharma, and our fantastic facilitators, Mamta Gurung, Avash Kharel, and Bikash Silwal, for making it all happen.

This year, based on direct feedback from our teachers, we added a brand-new topic: Digital Wellbeing!  The goal was to tackle digital addiction—for both our teachers and their students—and support everyone’s mental health.

The Goal: Learning Through Action

The day was far from a boring lecture! We kicked things off with a “Readiness Rating” where people expressed their feelings through body language—it was like a game of emotional charades! 

The fun continued with an introduction game where everyone shared a hobby and acted it out. Imagine a whole room of adults pretending to write, dance, or play sports together! It was the perfect way to break the ice. 

 Myth-Busting & Breaking Stigma

We tackled some serious topics too. Through interactive activities, we debunked common myths about mental health. For example:

• Myth: “Mental problems should be solved by yourself.”

• Fact: Nope! Just like a physical illness, it’s okay to seek help! 

Trainer Kapil Sharma gave a brilliant explanation, noting that many mental health issues begin between ages 8-24, and with proper care at home and school, 50% can be prevented.

 A Crucial Conversation: Suicide Prevention

We listened to a radio session on suicide and self-harm, which sparked a deep and empathetic discussion. The key takeaway? Always take someone asking for help seriously. It’s not “just for attention.” We learned the best ways to support someone:

• Do: Practice active listening and show empathy. 
• Don’t: Challenge them, use insults, or add pressure.

One powerful quote from Kapil that stuck with us all: “We need to win by understanding, not just by making others understand.” 

 Why Language Matters

A big thanks to Avash Kharel for a great presentation on how our words impact others. We learned to use person-first language (e.g., “a person with schizophrenia,” not “a schizophrenic”) and to drop harmful labels like “crazy” or “mad.”

 Mastering Digital Wellbeing

In a super relatable activity, we all wrote Facebook “statuses” on paper and reacted with emoji stickers!  It was a hilarious yet eye-opening way to see how we crave engagement online.

Kapil shared awesome strategies to break free, like:

• Setting screen time limits.
• Finding fun offline hobbies (reading, sports, painting!). 
• Doing a digital detox.

 Empowering Our Community

The feedback was incredible. Teachers like Kiran Purkuti are already planning to take these lessons back to their schools to teach students about positive language and mental health.

This training was all about building empathy, gaining practical skills, and empowering our teachers to create a positive, supportive environment for every student. Here’s to building a stronger, healthier community together!