Mental health on the school timetable

Mental health on the school timetable – a new project aims to teach children to cope with difficult emotions

Can we prevent poor well-being by getting to know ourselves better? The company Helphi aims to address the increasing challenges of poor well-being among children and young people. The company will teach the youth about scientific understanding, mental tools, and enhanced self-awareness. The project has just received funding from the Lighthouse Life Science.

We have difficulty learning when we feel unwell. Therefore, we need to feel good.

It sounds almost banal, but for thousands of schoolchildren, there are gray clouds hanging over everyday life, and this has consequences that extend into their adult lives. Poor mental well-being is a serious issue in itself, but it can result in the child having more difficulty concentrating, receiving lower grades, and ultimately being at risk of losing educational and future opportunities.

Children need to get to know themselves and their emotional lives

– We need to do something about the poor well-being among children and young people, says Pelle Plesner from Helphi.

The Danish startup company has received funding from the Lighthouse Life Science to test and develop a pilot initiative in five Danish primary schools.

For six months, 4th graders at the schools will learn about mental health using the learning platform Dishmo. The children will learn about themselves and their emotional lives, and they will be equipped to handle their feelings when life becomes challenging.

– It is crucial to improve the well-being of our children and young people. Imagine if we could implement this before puberty in all 1060 primary schools in Denmark, so that our future generations would have at least one hour a week on mental health for three years. What could that mean? says Pelle Plesner.

Mental health on equal terms with biology

According to the Knowledge Council for Prevention, mental illness and poor mental well-being in children and young people can be prevented, slowed, and treated, but there is a lack of early interventions. This intervention should ideally be called Dishmo in the future, if it is up to Helphi.

– We hope that this can become a new subject, where all children in grades 4-6 will learn about mental health, science, and biology, says Pelle Plesner.

We need to manage the unruly emotions instead of the other way around

The Schoolchildren’s Survey 2022 shows that around 30.000 girls in grades 7-9 score 'low' on a mental well-being test, which means they are leaning against a depression.

Boys, as a group, are doing better, but they also face mental challenges such as loneliness, stress, and low self-esteem. Nationwide, 15 percent of children and young people are diagnosed with at least one mental illness before they turn 18, and 45.000 students in Danish primary schools show signs of poor well-being, says Pelle Plesner.

– Dishmo teaches children about the biology behind our emotions and covers topics like cells, the brain, affective neuroscience and evolution, providing a scientific foundation for understanding how our rich but also complex emotional lives have developed and been shaped. Children learn a lot about the outer world, but perhaps we teach them too little about navigating the inner landscape. This way, their emotional lives can easily feel permanently out of control. It becomes like a sweet but somewhat unruly puppy that we can't really control. We might become afraid of something that we don't actually need to fear, says Pelle Plesner.

Learning to accept thoughts and feelings

The lessons and exercises include mindfulness, hypnosis, breathing exercises, and metacognitive therapy, which roughly speaking involves accepting the presence of thoughts and emotional reactions without delving further into them.

– There are scientifically documented tools that can help with, for example, letting og of anxiety, but children are not familiar with them. With Dishmo, children gain practical experience with 12 selected tools for better mental well-being, says Pelle Plesner.

Dishmo is an interdisciplinary initiative aimed at strengthening the mental health of schoolchildren. For one hour a week, they receive education on the biology behind emotions and try out documented tools for managing their inner landscape. The initiative could transform our society, says Pelle Plesner, co-founder of Helphi.

Focus on the Right Thing

Helphi sounds like both 'healthy' and 'Delphi,' and this is intentional.

'Know yourself' was written on the wall of the Temple of Apollo, where you could visit the oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece.

When we get to know ourselves, we can better manage ourselves and the world around us – and perhaps become better at loving ourselves. Metacognitive therapy teaches us to become aware of our emotional reactions but also to avoid scratching at mental mosquito bites.

– We have an exercise on self-talk – what do we say to ourselves? We see ourselves through the lens of our mindset, and it is crucial to reflect on how we think and become aware of a pattern. Imagine writing sad messages on a window. It’s a concrete exercise to show children that they can choose their focus. You can choose to look through the bad on the window and see the trees and landscape outside. The bad doesn’t disappear – it still remains on the window – but you can choose to give attention to something else, says Pelle Plesner.

Pilot Project in Five Danish Primary Schools

Over the past year, Helphi has run a pilot test of Dishmo in eight schools in Italy and Turkey with support from the EU's Erasmus+ program. With funding from Lighthouse Life Science, Pelle Plesner and his team will now test the platform in Denmark.

Five schools in Aarhus, Lejre, and Holbæk will test Dishmo in their school timetable over the course of six months. During this time, Helphi will develop knowledge in collaboration with teachers, who are experts in lesson planning and content delivery.

– We need to examine the role of the teacher and see how much they can take on. How do we support them, and have we integrated Dishmo well enough? The aim of this pilot project is not to achieve a situation where 30 percent of children become five percent happier. The goal of the project is to develop new knowledge on how to create the best subject in schools – both to improve mental well-being and to prevent poor mental weel-being, says Pelle Plesner.

Dishmo is a collaborative project between the company Helphi and Holbæk Municipality under Lighthouse Life Science – mental health.