For the last three years, students at Lincoln Middle School at Cottage Grove have been learning about mental health in addition to physical health. It’s a mindfulness-based mental health curriculum developed by researchers at the University of Oregon and private partners including Lori Allen, the executive director of the Oregon Mind Body Institute funded by the Oregon Community Foundation. They say the idea is to help sixth graders cope and manage their stress at a critical time in their development and also to help remove the stigma around talking about mental health. Allen joins us, along with Lincoln Middle School teacher Heather Devine and her seventh grade son, Nate Schlitt, who was taught the curriculum in school and now uses it in his daily life.
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