Addressing Mental and Emotional Health in Your High School Health Classroom

By Rachel Gwaltney, Ed.S., Associate Academic Designer, McGraw Hill

A student stays quiet during group work. Another jokes about being “so depressed” after a bad test. Someone else admits they stayed up all night worrying about everything they have due that week.

Moments like these show up in classrooms every day. They’re often signals that students are still figuring out how to understand and manage their mental and emotional health. As an educator, you’re in a unique position to help!

While Mental Health Awareness Month in May brings welcome attention to these topics, supporting students’ mental and emotional well-being shouldn’t happen just once a year. In a thoughtful high school health classroom, mental health education can help students understand themselves, support their peers, and develop practical skills they can use long after graduation.

Mental Health Topics to Cover

Mental health is a big topic. Big enough to fill an entire year! To make it manageable for students and realistic within a school schedule, it helps to focus on a few key ideas.

In the mental health module in our new curriculum, *Total Health*, content is organized around a handful of key themes: understanding yourself, mental health and stigma, and responding to crisis. These areas help students build a strong foundation of knowledge while developing practical skills.

Understanding Yourself

The first step in supporting mental health is helping students understand themselves.

Our program’s mental health module begins with this idea and encourages students to explore topics such as self-esteem, identity, resilience, and emotional awareness. These lessons are the most powerful when they connect directly to students’ everyday experiences.

In your classroom, you could ask questions like:

• How do social media and AI‑altered images influence how you see yourself?
• What pressures do you feel daily? This could include balancing school, jobs, extracurriculars, and family responsibilities.
• What do you do when you feel overwhelmed?

One way to start the conversation is with a quick anonymous poll asking students what causes the most stress during the school week. Responses (often things like academic pressure, lack of sleep, social expectations, or online comparison) can open the door to discussions about coping strategies.

You can also bring these concepts into the classroom through small activities that build self-awareness. Students might keep a short “stress journal” for a week, tracking when they feel overwhelmed and what helps them reset. Reflection prompts such as “What helps you calm down when you’re frustrated?” or “What environments help you feel most focused?” can help students identify patterns in their emotions and behavior.

Another approach is to incorporate short mindfulness or grounding exercises at the beginning or end of class. Even two minutes of guided breathing, stretching, or quiet reflection can introduce students to simple techniques they can use outside the classroom.

Mental Health & Stigma

Another key focus of the Total Health curricula is helping students understand mental health conditions and the stigma that can surround them.

Students often hear mental health terms used casually or incorrectly in everyday conversation. Lessons focused on mental health conditions can help them explore what mental health actually means, learn about conditions such as anxiety or depression, and examine how stigma develops.

This is also a powerful opportunity to incorporate media literacy. You might ask students to analyze how mental health is portrayed in movies, television shows, or social media.

• Are the portrayals accurate?
• What stereotypes appear?
• How might those messages affect people who are struggling?

Media literacy activities can be particularly valuable. For example, students can evaluate mental health advice they find online, comparing posts from social media influencers with information from reputable health organizations. This helps students develop the ability to identify reliable sources and question misleading claims.

Responding to Crisis

Finally, students need to know how to recognize when someone may need help and what supportive actions they can take.

In this part of the curriculum, students explore topics such as warning signs of distress, suicide prevention, coping with grief and loss, and knowing when to involve trusted adults or professionals.

Scenario-based activities can make these lessons more practical. For instance, students might read short scenarios about a friend experiencing intense stress, withdrawal, or emotional distress. In small groups, they can discuss what warning signs they notice and what supportive responses might look like.

You can also guide students in identifying their support systems. Students might create a “support map” that lists trusted people and resources they could turn to during difficult moments (such as family members, school counselors, teachers, community organizations, or crisis hotlines).

These exercises should reinforce an important message: students are not responsible for solving serious mental health challenges on their own, but they can play a role in encouraging someone to seek help.

Strategies to Engage Students in Mental Health Education

Mental health lessons tend to resonate most when they are interactive, practical, and connected to real-life experiences.

Here are a few strategies to make your mental health instruction engaging and meaningful:

1. Start with the world students already live in. Discussions about academic pressure, sleep habits, relationships, and online environments often spark meaningful participation because students recognize these challenges immediately.
2. Make learning hands-on and skill-based. Students are more likely to remember strategies they practice. Activities such as a “Stress Strategy Lab” allow students to rotate through stations where they try techniques like breathing exercises, journaling prompts, guided imagery, or quick movement breaks.
3. Encourage student voice. Give students opportunities to lead discussions, design awareness campaigns, or research mental health topics that interest them. Some classes create posters, short presentations, or informational guides aimed at helping peers manage stress.
4. Incorporate creative expression. Art, writing, or storytelling activities can help students explore emotions in ways that feel safe and reflective. For example, students might create a visual “resilience collage” showing the people, activities, and values that help them cope with challenges.
5. Use multimedia resources. Short videos, podcasts, and interviews with mental health professionals can introduce expert perspectives and real-life stories that resonate with students.
6. Connect lessons to school culture. Teachers might encourage students to design ideas for promoting well-being within their school. This could include peer support initiatives, awareness events, or campaigns that normalize asking for help.
7. Make learning actionable. Encourage students to leave the unit with practical tools they can use. This might include building a personal resilience plan, setting SMART goals for managing stress, or creating a list of strategies they can use when they begin to feel overwhelmed.

The strategies above are incorporated into the curriculum design of Total Health.

Resources and Organizations for Mental Health Support

Finally, seek out trusted resources to supplement your classroom and bring in expert perspectives. Total Health benefits from partnerships with nonprofit organizations dedicated to supporting mental health education and awareness.

The Jed Foundation (JED) offers research-based tools focused on protecting emotional health and preventing suicide among teens and young adults. JED’s work centers on three main goals: equipping individuals, strengthening schools, and mobilizing communities. Their resources support schools in strengthening mental health awareness and systems of care.

You can also find engaging, helpful resources with AMAZE. They take the awkward out of growing up with engaging, animated videos on the topics adolescents actually want to know about: puberty, sex ed, their bodies, and healthy relationships. These videos can serve as useful discussion starters in health classrooms.

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We’ve curated a ready-to-use collection of videos from these partners and more in this playlist.

Mental Health in a Modern Curriculum

When mental health education is relevant, interactive, and grounded in students’ real experiences, it becomes more than a unit within the curriculum. It becomes a set of skills students can use throughout their lives.

By helping students understand emotions, challenge stigma, practice coping strategies, and recognize when to seek support, educators can play a meaningful role in supporting the well-being of young people, both inside and beyond the classroom.

To learn more about our brand-new high school health curriculum, Total Health, visit:

[embed]Total Health from McGraw Hill | Grades 9-12 Help your students make healthy life choices with Total Health, a digital-first health program with complete alignment…www.mheducation.com

Rachel Gwaltney, Ed.S., is an Associate Academic Designer at McGraw Hill with a background in science education, public health, and curriculum development. She taught high school science for five years and later served as a Curriculum and Training Fellow at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Her work focuses on developing engaging, evidence-based educational resources that support both educators and student learning.