Boosting Kids’ Mental Health

A RUGBY knight’s visited Queenstown to launch a programme designed to reduce youth suicide rates.

Women’s organisation Impact100 Whakatipu last year awarded one of two $100,000 grants to the Sir John Kirwan Foundation Mitey mental health programme, allowing it be rolled out across local primary schools.

During his recent visit, foundation chairman and All Blacks legend Sir John Kirwan told Mountain Scene he originally thought the programme

— now in about 300 New Zealand schools — would suit high school students.

‘‘However, all the child psychiatrists, psychologists, teachers, headmasters, said our kids need it by the time they get to secondary school.

‘‘It’s very much a preventative tool, so it’s about giving them the toolkit they need to address life.’’

Sir John says it’s curriculum-based and teacher-led — ‘‘we have a teacher, or a coach as we call them, go in and teach the teachers’’.

‘‘What we do is it gets integrated right over the curriculum, so you might have 10 minutes of Mitey and then you get into your learning.’’

Sir John, who had his own well-publicised struggles with depression, says young people’s mental health has worsened over the past 20 years — ‘‘I just think it’s the way society’s gone’’.

And he doesn’t think Queenstown’s any different.

‘‘Everyone outside Queens-town thinks you’re incredibly rich, but the reality is it’s bloody hard to live in this town because the cost of living is high and a lot of people work in the tourism industry which is not super-paying.’’

During his visit he spoke to several local school principals.

Glenorchy School’s already introduced Mitey and Queens-town Primary, as one example, is launching it in the third term.

Principal Fiona Cavanagh states in a school newsletter: ‘‘I am really excited to know all our teachers will be able to significantly and positively prepare our tamariki with the skills and knowledge to manage mental health.’’

St Joseph’s School principal Alan Grant, who was impressed with Sir John’s presentation, says they’re likely to start the programme next year, as is Arrowtown School.

By Philip Chandler. As published in Mountain Scene