This blog is from one of COBIS' Supporting Associates.

Written by Ilia Lindsay, Psychology Lead at Komodo.

As educators and school leaders, supporting students is at the heart of your daily mission. To move from simply supporting to fully promoting student wellbeing, we need to change our approach and look at each student as a whole person, not just at their mental health needs. When we think of the whole student, we acknowledge ‘Holistic Wellbeing’. What is it and how to facilitate this change of perspective?

One way to explain how holistic wellbeing works is by describing a model of wellbeing called Te Whare Tapa Whā developed by Dr Mason Durie.

Picture a person’s health and wellbeing as a house with four walls, each representing a different aspect of a person’s wellbeing:

1. Mental and emotional wellbeing - our mental health and ability to think, feel and communicate our emotions
2. Physical wellbeing - our physical health, growth and rehabilitation from injury or sickness
3. Family and social wellbeing - the capacity to care, feel belonging and connection to others, including being able to reach out to social networks for support
4. Spiritual wellbeing - our connection to the world and sense of purpose. This can be in a religious, cultural or spiritual practice or our connection to our sense of self and direction in life.

When all four walls are in balance, we flourish. Acknowledging that these areas of wellbeing are interlinked and influence each other promotes a focus on holistic health that gets students to a state of thriving rather than a narrow focus on problem-solving where they are just surviving.

The house metaphor makes it easy to understand how one dimension of wellbeing can easily affect another. If we want meaningful change and long-term improvement in student wellbeing, we need to consider the whole picture; if we fail to do this, our interventions miss the mark and we don’t see lasting change. A practical example of this can be seen in many schools during exam time: students often report self-doubt and increased stress (mental wellbeing); as a result, a decrease in social connectedness follows which can then lead to increased conflict and sense of loneliness (social wellbeing). As teachers, we try to help with these difficulties through encouragement and support but we don’t always see improvement as we’re not looking at the full picture:

• Students struggling in this scenario are likely getting less hours of sleep due to late nights studying and stress impacting their sleep onset (physical wellbeing);
• Subsequently, their self-doubt starts to challenge their decisions and direction (spiritual wellbeing).

When we gain visibility of the full picture, we come to realise that there are more dimensions needing attention. This example shows us how we need to look at the whole student, the whole picture of wellbeing. We need tools that enable us to measure wellbeing on a holistic scale and not just on the behaviours that can be observed in the school environment. If we fail to support students across all four walls of wellbeing, the house will fall.

Te Whare Tapa Whā encourages schools to be creative in their thinking of wellbeing which means that there are many strategies, activities and interventions that can occur to support the different dimensions. By nurturing and strengthening all dimensions, students develop resilience and are able to flourish and thrive. When life becomes challenging in one wall or dimension, students can draw on the other walls until they are able to strengthen that wall again. This is a very hopeful and positive perspective on wellbeing as it teaches us that - although one wall of wellbeing may be impacted - we have the ability to “rebuild” and “restrengthen” that wall with the skills and strengths we possess in the other domains. When considering student wellbeing in this holistic manner we need to ensure that the school environment acknowledges and supports each of these dimensions. Each wall needs time and energy to maintain the balance of our wellbeing - when schools are able to do this, we see students gain emotion regulation skills, strong social relationships and feelings of connectedness, they are physically developing and maturing and feel a sense of belonging to their community, religious group or spiritual practices (Rochford, 2004).

The important question to reflect on now is, how does your school measure and gather information on the whole of the students’ wellbeing?

Information is power and understanding what makes up the house of wellbeing for each student empowers us to be truly effective in providing wellbeing support.

Would you like to know how Komodo can help your schools measure and implement holistic wellbeing strategies and interventions? Reach out to connect with our support & psychologist team: https://bit.ly/3Kg5brf

The author

Ilia Lindsay is Psychology Lead at Komodo and a Registered Psychologist specialised in Child and Family Psychology with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, a Master’s degree with distinction in Child and Family Psychology and Post Graduate Diploma of Child and Family Psychology achieved at the University of Canterbury.

During her career, she has worked within the mental health and education sector providing behaviour and learning assessments and interventions. She has additional training and provides families with DBT, CBT, ACT, PCIT and Maudsley therapies.

References

• Aish, R. What is Holistic Wellbeing (Waiora)
• Durie, M. (1994). Te whare tapa whā. Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand
• Rochford, T. (2004). Whare Tapa Wha: A Mäori model of a unified theory of health. Journal of Primary Prevention, 25(1), 41-57

Online Resources:

• https://www.health.govt.nz/our-work/populations/maori-health/maori-health-models/maori-health-models-te-whare-tapa-wha
• https://mentalhealth.org.nz/te-whare-tapa-wha