The resources on this site are designed to support educators within Canadian secondary schools to address issues of mental health and mental illness in the classroom.
Mental health problems and mental illness affect one in five young people at any given time, and an estimated two-thirds of young people with mental health problems are not receiving the help they need. Suicide is the third-leading cause of death among young people between the ages of 15 and 24, and at least 90% of those who commit suicide have a diagnosable mental illness.
To address these distressing statistics, school-based mental health education programs have been developed in many countries, and have been shown to be effective in increasing knowledge, improving attitudes and supporting help-seeking behaviour.
This project builds on an earlier initiative by CMHA called Mental Health and High School,
which focused on providing high school students, their educators and parents with information about adolescent mental health problems and mental illness and how they can affect young people’s learning. The resources developed for this project are available on the CMHA website at www.cmha.ca/highschool
