Six strategies to support students with low mood and anxiety

Supporting student wellbeing: practical strategies for schools and colleges

We know how much you care about your students’ mental health and wellbeing.

Our 2024 Annual Schools Survey highlighted that school and college staff are concerned about students’ mental wellbeing. We know that supporting staff to understand how to build good mental wellbeing across the whole school and college community is key to promoting prevention and early intervention.

When asked what additional help staff felt they needed to support their students’ wellbeing, 44.4% said they needed a guided action plan to support a whole school or college approach to mental health, whilst 33.3% said they wanted more training opportunities.

We’re here to help. The following strategies will help you to nurture students’ wellbeing and promote positive mental health by giving students practical techniques to work through common mental health difficulties such as anxiety and low mood.

We recognise these strategies aren’t a substitute for clinical support. Our clinical service provides additional evidence-based sessions for students aged 11-25, school and college staff, parents and carers, delivered online by specialist mental health practitioners.

Find out more about our clinical service.

We have also published a guide of strategies to help you support your own wellbeing, as we know that promoting positive staff wellbeing is key to a whole school or college approach to mental health and wellbeing

Explore self-care strategies for school staff.

Low mood

Negative thinking traps

When we experience low mood, we often find ourselves stuck thinking about things repeatedly. We might even feel trapped in these negative thoughts, which can perpetuate low mood. These negative thinking traps include:

Catastrophising: imagining the worst-case scenario and being unable to cope with it.

Predicting failure: believing something will go wrong or that others will think negatively of us.

Negative filter: seeing only the negatives and not the positives.

Self-criticising: being overly critical of our own actions.

Helping your students recognise when they are in a negative thinking trap and sharing self-care strategies can help them break out of these cycles.

Self-care strategies focus on doing things we enjoy, taking time to meet our physical and emotional needs, or spending time with others.

Explore our full library of self-care resources for young people.

B-A-C-E – body – achievement – closeness – enjoyment

When experiencing low mood, students can find it hard to engage in everyday tasks and activities that bring fulfilment and promote positive mental health and wellbeing. They may find it helpful and motivating to seek a balance of activity, by slowly building in daily activities guided by B-A-C-E. These are activities that promote moving our body, give us a sense of achievement, bring us closer to others and spark enjoyment. Encourage your students to reflect on their day, perhaps by keeping a log of activity guided by B-A-C-E. What did they learn about how different activities made them feel?

Anxiety

Grounding and breathing techniques:

Grounding and breathing techniques may be helpful for students experiencing anxiety. These techniques help to slow down our physical response to anxiety (like a racing heartbeat or shortness of breath) and bring our thoughts back to the present.

It’s important for young people to practice these techniques when they’re feeling calm before trying to use them to regulate anxiety.

Hand breathing (breathing technique):

1. Stretch your fingers on one hand.

2. Use your first finger on your other hand (index finger) as a ‘pointer’.

3. Start at the bottom of your thumb and slide your pointer finger towards the tip, pause at the top then slide your finger down the other side to the base of your index finger.

4. Now slide the pointer up your index finger to your fingertip, pause and slide down the other side. Repeat with your other fingers.

5. Become aware of your breath – breathe in through your nose as you slide up each finger and breathe out as you slide down.

Five senses (grounding technique):

This technique helps students to get out of their heads and reconnect with the physical space they’re in, helping to regulate difficult emotions.

The problem solving STEPS

Constantly worrying about lots of different things is a sign of anxiety.

Supporting young people to differentiate between hypothetical ‘what-if?’ worries and worries that can be tackled can help bring back focus to what they can control. This can help relieve anxiety by enabling them to let go of the ‘what-ifs?’.

These steps can help resolve the worries that are in their control.

Opening up

Back-up team

Encouraging young people to be open with the people they trust when they’re struggling is a vital first step in supporting them.

This strategy involves young people thinking about those in their life who support them. This could include family members, carers, friends, teachers, faith leaders and youth workers.

The young person should write their supportive figures’ names in the circles, along with the type of support they provide. They should place these supportive figures closer or further from themselves based on how much they trust each person.

This diagram then functions as a visual representation of their support network which they can update over time, helping them to work out who to speak to if they are struggling.

Extra support

We offer an online clinical support service which takes a whole-school or college approach to mental health.

The service supports young people aged 11-25 experiencing mild-to-moderate mental health difficulties, like anxiety and low mood, and the trusted adults around them.

Sign up by the end of November to access the service for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Find out more about our service and other support available.