My Instruction Manual – World Mental Health Day 2026 – FREE

FREE My Instruction Manual – World Mental Health Day 2026

A fun self-awareness activity helping children communicate what works for them. Explore likes, dislikes, happiest moments, ideal working conditions and what helps when things get tricky!

This FREE World Mental Health Day worksheet is a creative “instruction manual” activity helping children identify and communicate their preferences, needs, strengths and the things that help them.

Children can fill in their own personal guide to what they like, what they don't, when they're happiest, the conditions they work best in, what helps when things feel difficult and anything important they'd like other people to know.

About this resource

Sections include:

• Model Information
• Likes & Dislikes
• Happiest When...
• Troubleshooting
• Operating Conditions
• Please Avoid
• Important Information

The playful format and theme makes it easier to explore individual needs without making the activity feel overly clinical or serious.

Features

• Fun instruction-manual theme
• Explores preferences, needs and support
• Open-ended and highly individual
• Suitable for words, phrases or drawings
• Useful for children who find direct conversations about needs difficult
• Can pair with our Primary World Mental Health Day presentation

Benefits

Helps children:

• Develop self-awareness
• Identify what helps them
• Communicate preferences and needs
• Recognise that people need different things
• Think about the conditions in which they feel comfortable and work well
• Understand that there is no single “right” way to be supported

How to incorporate it into your setting

Use as an individual PSHE activity, transition task, pastoral exercise or part of your World Mental Health Day lesson.

With the child's permission, the finished manual could also provide useful information for adults working with them.

What is the World Mental Health Day 2026 theme?

The World Federation for Mental Health has announced the official theme for World Mental Health Day 2026 as:

“Lived Experiences Heard: Real Voices, Real Change.”

The theme puts the focus on listening to people with lived experience. Real experiences can give us important insight into what people need, what is working and what could be better.

For children and young people, we can explore this in an age-appropriate way: we all experience the world differently, our experiences matter, our voices matter and listening to other people's experiences can help us understand one another better.

Importantly, exploring lived experience in school doesn't mean asking children or young people to disclose personal or difficult experiences. Activities can focus on everyday experiences, preferences, ideas, needs and perspectives while always allowing pupils to choose what they share.

Bringing World Mental Health Day into your school or setting

You don't need to dedicate an entire school day to make World Mental Health Day meaningful.

Use one of these activities during registration or form time, build a full PSHE lesson around one of the presentations, create a pupil-voice display, run small-group discussions, incorporate an activity into pastoral support, or choose different resources for different year groups.

Our free World Mental Health Day resources have deliberately been designed to be mixed, matched and adapted. You can run a complete lesson using one of the presentations, pair a presentation with its accompanying activity, or simply download a free standalone worksheet for a quick World Mental Health Day activity.

The key message running throughout the collection is simple:

We don't all experience the world in the same way. When we make space for different voices and genuinely listen to them, we can understand each other better and use what we learn to make things better.