Looking for some quick activities to improve mental health for students? Here’s a list of ideas that will get you feeling better and help you the next time you’re struggling.
School is rough and stressful, especially when you put expectations on yourself on top of the expectations your friends and family have of you. You’re so focused on doing well in school and getting everything done on time that you probably forget to take care of yourself.
By the time you realize you’re struggling, it feels impossible to get help. All of the resources out there get overwhelming and you don’t end up getting the help you need.
Here’s a list of activities you can do whenever you need to take care of your mental health because school is taking its toll on you.
This post is all about activities to improve mental health for students.
QUICK AND EASY ACTIVITIES TO
IMPROVE MENTAL HEALTH FOR STUDENTS:
1. Take a walk
Homework can take up an entire day and keep you stuck in your dorm room for far longer than you realize simply because you lose track of time. Being inside can be nice every once in a while when we’re trying to get something done or unwind in a way that we enjoy.
But, we all need a reset by leaving the home. Even if we don’t see people or visit others, we need to get outside to change our scenery and get back in touch with our inner selves. Taking a walk every now and then is going to help you put things into perspective.
Taking a walk lets you get out of your head for a while and enjoy the world around, even if that’s just direct sunlight and fresh air. Plus, it’s one of the best activities to improve mental health for students.
2. Create a study plan
Study plans can require a lot of work from you, but they’re worth it. Your assignments and tests are much easier to manage when you see them coming and can handle them in small chunks ahead of time.
To keep yourself from getting overwhelmed, start by going over your syllabi and identifying major assignments and exams you want to prepare for ahead of time. This includes essays, presentations, chapter tests, and finals.
Estimate the amount of time it’ll take to prepare and/or complete the assignment. Divide that up in increments and spread them out over a course of several weeks. Then, by the time that test or assignment is due, you’ll be ready to turn it in or complete the test.
3. Take a well-deserved power nap
Sometimes, the one thing you need is to take the nap. If you’re anything like me, you’ve been in the middle of studying or doing an assignment and you wanted to take a nap so bad that you guilt yourself for it.
Part of taking care of yourself and your mental health is giving space for rest. We live in a world that doesn’t value rest because it doesn’t provide any tangible benefits to our society.
So, we have to prioritize rest the same way we want to prioritize our mental health and improve ourselves. All that to say you should take that nap and enjoy the nap to actually get the rest. The goal is to make sure you’re doing the activities that improve mental health.
4. Order takeout (or cook, if you can)
When you’re in college, it’s hard to change up your routine and give food space and effort. Unless you’re living with an accessible kitchen, you likely won’t be able to cook.
Assuming you can’t use an actual kitchen to enjoy the process of creating a meal, you can order some takeout from your favorite restaurant. Whatever it is you love to eat and can’t make yourself, order it in.
Once you get the food, make sure you take the time to enjoy eating it. Put your phone in a different room, keep the TV remote out of reach, and truly relish every bite of your meal. By turning the act of eating good food into a purely blissful ritual, you take time for yourself.
5. Indulge a craving
This is the moment you let those cravings take over. Go to the campus convenience store and buy those chips or candies that you love. I always keep myself from eating certain foods—typically unsuccessfully—because I’ve grown up with shame about what my body likes.
So, if you have comfort foods too, let yourself eat them and put aside the guilt. Much of the time, you’re hard on yourself in so many ways beyond the school assignment that you should remove any extra internal pressures you can.
Indulging a craving is one those pressures: by eating the food you want but feel too guilty to eat, you can help remove one of those pressures and provide your body with a little bit of pleasure. Therefore, you’ll be doing one of many activities to improve mental health for students.
6. Eat fresh fruits or vegetables
Often, our mental health is impacted by the foods we eat. This is different for everyone and can usually be determined by how you, as an individual, feel when you eat something. Even when we don’t want to admit it, we notice the patterns of how the food we consume makes us feel.
We stress out about which foods are the “right” foods to eat, but there are no right or wrong foods. There are only the foods that make us feel good and provide us nourishment.
So, if fruits and vegetables are the types of food that make you feel good, eat them and take care of your body. Eat what you enjoy and what works for your body.
7. Meet up with a friend for lunch
One of the most important ways to improve your mental health is to spend time away from thinking about school. Not only does worrying about school achieve absolutely nothing in terms of doing well in school, but it also can lead to you doing worse in school.
So, take the time to hang out with a friend and eat lunch. It might be a small act that feels like it has nothing to do with mental health or fun activities to improve mental health.
But, you’ll be amazed at how much you benefit from changing up your routine and spending time with friends in a lowkey, casual way.
8. Set up a “phone-a-friend” contact
We all have people in our lives that get us. They make us feel completely comfortable and they understand us on a level we can only be grateful for because not everyone can give us that.
These are the type of people we appreciate and want to keep in our lives. We want to tend to those relationship and be there for them. But, we also have to let them be there for us and take advantage of how well they understand us.
These friends are perfect for those moments we really need to talk to someone or hang out with someone as a way to relax. We’re not always in a crisis when we need to improve our mental health.
In fact, the actions we take when we notice ourselves struggling is precisely the reason we don’t go into crisis. The type of friends who just get it are the ones you want when you don’t want to explain that school is kicking your butt and your mental health isn’t great.
9. Go to office hours
For those of us with anxiety, we probably also have social anxiety to some degree and that makes office hours seem like the worst freaking idea on the planet.
It’s so incredibly daunting to think we have to sit in a room, alone, with a professor or TA for half an hour (or more) and be interesting. I don’t know about you, but I definitely struggle with being interesting to friends and family, let alone someone who has an advanced degree.
But, when you go to office hours, you can discuss questions you have about the subject material or assignments. You can also just talk with them and build up a relationship.
By building this relationship, you need to take time off for mental health issues, you know your professor—which is why this is one of the most important mental health activities for college students.
10. Communicate with your professor
This falls along the same lines as going to office hours. But, the difference is knowing when you need to make the formal effort of talking with your professor. Most of the time, we will probably muscle our way through anxiety, burnout, and stress when we should be reaching out.
On those rare occasions when we can’t “muscle-through,” we need to reach out to our professors and communicate. Most of the time, professors are very reasonable (much more so if you develop a relationship with them during office hours…).
So, email your professor. Let them know you’re struggling. While you shouldn’t have to provide a reason for mental health issues because of ~everything~, it might help if you give some background as to why you’re feeling this way.
Anything from adjusting to college to you broke up with your high school partner. Obviously, your professor could completely disregard your struggle—I’m sorry if this is the outcome—but the important part is you try.
11. Create premature deadlines for major assignments
Set a deadline earlier than your actual deadline. This won’t work for everyone, depending on you respond to internal expectations (although you could ask your professor to help by providing some external expectations).
For those of you who want to avoid last-minute stress and can follow through on self-imposed deadlines, set a deadline for yourself anywhere from 24 hours to an entire week before something is due.
Activities to improve mental health for students like this can suck in the moment, but provide great rewards later when you are no longer cramming for an assignment or test.
One benefit is you’re now giving yourself time to bring your questions or final draft to your professor for comments. Plus, if you’re busy during the week something is due, complete the assignment or studying ahead of time (brush up on the studying before the test) and you’re good to go.
12. Read a book or watch an educational video
Sometimes the best way to improve your mental health around school is by taking time away from it for a little while. To be clear, you don’t want to avoid school because we all know will not improve your mental health.
That’s why it’s a good idea to take some time away from school with an activity that has a defined time limit. You could read a chapter of a book, for instance. Theoretically, you could read the entire book, but, hopefully, you focus on using the book as a tool rather than an escape.
(You can definitely use books as an escape but only when it won’t end up with negative consequences.)
13. Try out the Pomodoro method
When you can’t avoid school because a major test is coming up, try the Pomodoro method. You can download an app or even use an online timer. It’s a great way to change up your studying habits and reward you for doing what you should be doing.
We often forget to treat ourselves when we’re stressed, so we avoid the things that cause us stress, which can make them worse. So, by using something like the pomodoro timer, we’re recognizing the good work that we’re doing and making it possible to continue doing that.
14. Designate parts of your room to different purposes
This will probably be hard for a lot of you who are living in small, bite-sized dorms. But, I encourage you to give it a shot because it’s much easier to get yourself to do things when you’re trained your brain.
Try to designate one part of your room for studying. In other words, try not to study when you’re in bed. If you do, your brain will have a harder time shutting down when you want to sleep and a harder time staying awake when you want to study.
Realistically, as long as you keep your bed and desk as separate spaces where you do two different things, you’ll make your life so much easier. Of course, when you start introducing scrolling through social media and watching shows or movies, your room can seem too small.
Overall, do your best to keep the work out of your bed and the sleep out of your desk, and you’ll be surprised at how ready your brain is for sleeping and studying.
(As a bonus, you can wear headphones when you want to study and train your brain to associate work with earphones. You’ll focus better just because of that.)
