Mental Health in Further Education. Something which all of us want to understand better, although on the surface is something that most are just trying to cover with a band aid. I came into Education wanting to help students, what I found was students having increased negative feelings about their work and themselves because they see the stress their teachers are under. They see the daily struggles of marking, paperwork and scrutiny. They see us exhausting ourselves and are left confused. My research over the past three years has stemmed from exactly this realisation, that we need to help our staff before we can help our students. Across the sector we have seen a huge increase in the need to support both staff and students with their mental wellbeing.

My main focus was around utilising Art Therapy techniques which can explore your positive attitudes and emotions and allow yourself to build these over time. This session will look at the specifics of my research, as well as how you can adopt these into your own institutions. Simple, quick and effective tasks which will allow us to both understand and work with our own, and others mental health.