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How to Build a Meaningful Mental Health Curriculum
A Practical Guide for Schools
June 2026 | 120 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
This book provides a comprehensive guide to designing and delivering a safe, confident and inclusive mental health curriculum for primary and secondary schools.
It offers support strategies for staff, ensuring they feel equipped to teach sensitive and sometimes challenging topics, explores how to support social and emotional learning across the curriculum, and discusses how to work with parents and carers to broaden the impact of mental health teaching outside of the school.
Written with an intersectional perspective to meet diverse student needs, it includes case studies to demonstrate how key topics can play out in classrooms, reflective questions to deepen your understanding of important issues and a set of flexible lesson plans, designed to work across age phases, that can guide your medium-term planning.
This is essential reading for all teachers and school leaders with an interest in supporting high-quality mental health teaching in schools.
It offers support strategies for staff, ensuring they feel equipped to teach sensitive and sometimes challenging topics, explores how to support social and emotional learning across the curriculum, and discusses how to work with parents and carers to broaden the impact of mental health teaching outside of the school.
Written with an intersectional perspective to meet diverse student needs, it includes case studies to demonstrate how key topics can play out in classrooms, reflective questions to deepen your understanding of important issues and a set of flexible lesson plans, designed to work across age phases, that can guide your medium-term planning.
This is essential reading for all teachers and school leaders with an interest in supporting high-quality mental health teaching in schools.
Part I: Building a Meaningful Mental Health Curriculum
Chapter 1: The landscape of school mental health
Chapter 2: The leadership and management of school mental health
Chapter 3: Supporting the delivery of your mental health curriculum through staff training
Chapter 4: Curriculum teaching and learning to promote resilience and support social and emotional learning
Chapter 5: Working with parents and carers to support your mental health curriculum
Part II: Lesson Plans
Chapter 6: Feelings and emotions
Chapter 7: Coping strategies for tricky feelings
Chapter 8: Self-care for supporting mental health
Chapter 9: The importance of sleep
Chapter 10: Food and mood
Chapter 11: The importance of exercise
Chapter 12: The importance of healthy relationships
Chapter 13: Types of mental ill-health
Chapter 14: Support for your mental health
