Hello and welcome to the project. In this project I am going to talk about ways to improve your mental health. But first, I need to make a couple things clear. First of all, I am not a professional therapist or anything. Everything in this project is either based on personal experience or stuff I have heard from others. Second, the point of this project is not to "cure" deppression. You can't just cure it like that. This helps make it less bad for some people, though. Third, everyone is different. Just because the things in this project don't work doesn't mean you have something wrong with you. And just because you did something you aren't supposed to doesn't mean you are a bad person either. With that aside, let's get into the main part of this project. The first tip I am going to give you is one you have probably heard before, and it definitely doesn't work for everyone. But nothing in this project is a guarentee so I am putting it anyways. The first peice of advice is to try your best to look at the bright side. Like "That soccer game I wanted to go to got canceled, but at least I get free time." Obviously this doesn't work for everything because not everything HAS a bright side, but you have to try to find it before you just say "This sucks. There is no upside." The second tip I am going to give you is to try to stay off screens as much as you can. There is a reason for this and I have a ton of tips regarding that, so that will be it's own project. Once I've posted it, I will put the link here: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/1386744900 The third tip I'm going to give you is to have a good, healthy way to cope. Scrolling on social media to distract yourself isn't healthy. There are many, many good coping strategies and many many unhealthy ones. So I'm going to share some healthy ones I know of. The main two I use I call the writing method and the lyric method. The writing method is where you write about your problem or feelings. I highly reccomend this one if you are trying to make a hard choice or need help processing something. Afterwards, you can either shred the paper into many tiny peices or paint over the words so they aren't visible anymore. The lyrics method is for when you need to avoid thinking about something or stop a spiral. You just kinda think of song lyrics you know instead of whatever you were thinking about until you calmed down. You can also actually play music, it probably depends on the person weither it works better to actually listen to the music or just try to remember lyrics. The only thing about this strategy is that you need to avoid choosing songs that remind you of the thing you are trying to avoid thinking about. Some other coping strategies I've heard of are drawing on yourself, ripping up paper, venting to a freind, drawing in general, and taking deep breaths. The fourth tip is that your mental and physical health are connected. Not getting enough sleep can make you feel more irritable and sad. I am not a medical professional so if you need to please do your own research on sleep, because if you aren't sleeping well there IS a reason for it. And if you are in a state where you really don't want to shower or brush your teeth, you really just need to force yourself to do it on this one. If you don't do it, you will regret it. Everyone who does it regrets it. If you start, it will get easier to get yourself to do it over time. If you stop doing it, you will get used to not doing it and it will be even harder to start again. With that, I am concluding this project. If you think I missed something or there is something I should add, please let me know. Keep in mind that we are on a site for children and you do need to tread lightly around some topics to keep the kids safe. -
