The Mental Box – Mental health in a box

WELCOME TO THE MENTAL BOX!

The Mental Box: Mental Health in a Box
Since 2010, The Mental Box has been dedicated to developing innovative psychoeducational tools centered on trauma, resilience, and mental well-being. Our mission is to equip professionals with engaging and accessible resources to support children’s well-being in a playful yet meaningful way. Each year, we spotlight a new product, refining our approach to ensure that every tool is simple, child-friendly, and designed to meet children’s evolving needs.

The Magical Resilience Forest

Welcome to The Magical Resilience Forest, a magical space created by The Mental Box where children explore how to cope with life’s challenges through play. This special tool offers a nurturing and secure environment, empowering children to build resilience in a way that feels natural and safe. Thoughtfully designed to align with a child’s world, it encourages a positive and empowering approach to overcoming difficulties. Rooted in the whole-brain approach, this tool contributes to an integrated and balanced brain, fostering a strong neurological foundation for resilience and mental well-being.

THE POWER OF THE MAGICAL RESILIENCE FOREST

When children learn to reflect, explore, and voice their needs during difficult moments, they gain essential life skills. This ability not only makes it easier for them to find the right support but also has a natural calming and regulating effect—something that neurobiological studies have consistently highlighted.

WHAT CAN YOU DO WITH IT?

Visually and simply represent children’s concerns and needs.
Explore the root causes of these concerns.
Guide children in discovering various resilience resources to help them cope with these challenges and the related experiences.
Support children in discussing these experiences in a child-friendly way.
Create a safe environment that allows space for difficult conversations, self-exploration, and strengthening a harmonious brain, all with the goal of promoting well-being and resilience.

EXPLORING TOGETHER – A PATH TO RESILIENCE

With the child, dive deeper into their experiences and work together to find ways to use their chosen resilience resources.
After selecting the events, concerns, needs, and resilience strategies that fit their situation in The Magical Resilience Forest, the child places them on a personal talk board. This, combined with the resilience cushion, becomes the starting point for a meaningful conversation about how to handle challenges with strength and confidence. The resilience cushion helps activate both hemispheres of the brain, promoting emotional balance and overall well-being, while also offering a playful way to navigate difficult discussions.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Through guided exploration, children can express what they are experiencing and what they need.
Within the comforting environment of The Magical Resilience Forest, visual icons help children recognize the events that affect them, the worries on their minds, the emotions moving through them, and the inner strengths they can rely on to face challenges.

What’s Inside the Magical Resilience Forest?

The Magical Forest: A large interactive discovery screen (120×85 cm) that can be placed in any room, offering children a safe space to reflect on their experiences.
100 Wooden Talk Icons designed with clear visual symbols for:
- Life events (gray)
- Personal concerns (blue)
- Emotions (pink)
- Resilience strategies (green)
  These icons help children better understand their experiences and discover supportive resources to navigate challenges.

confidence. The resilience cushion helps activate both hemispheres of the brain, promoting emotional balance and overall well-being, while also offering a playful way to navigate difficult discussions.

What’s Inside?

A Talk Board: A visual A3 board where children can express their thoughts and needs, making it easier to have meaningful conversations and explore solutions together.
The Resilience Question Cushion: A soft and comforting cushion with question symbols, designed to help children reflect and open up about difficult experiences in a safe and supportive way.
Supporting Videos: Three engaging videos that offer both the child and facilitator a deeper understanding of resilience and how to effectively use The Magical Resilience Forest.

Now more than ever, it’s important that children from all cultural backgrounds recognize themselves in the materials they use. That’s why we have carefully designed our tools to reflect and celebrate diversity!
Our materials are already being used in Ukraine, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Curaçao, Malawi, Tanzania, Haiti, Aruba, and Mexico.

How to Use the Magical Resilience Forest

Discovering Life Events
Let children select events that reflect what they are going through.
Expressing Emotions
Using the talk icons, children can easily point out their emotions.
Understanding Challenges
Help children identify what difficulties or struggles they are experiencing.
Building Resilience
Guide children in recognizing inner strengths and external resources that can support them in challenging situations.
Connecting the Dots
- Encourage children to link events to their challenges.
- Help them connect events to emotions to better understand their feelings.
Creating Meaningful Conversations
- Gently encourage children to open up about their experiences.
- Teach them how to ask thoughtful questions to deepen their conversations.
Growing Emotional Awareness
- Expand children’s emotional vocabulary by discussing emotions in depth.

Fun Extra Activities

Bringing Stories to Life
- Use The Magical Resilience Forest while reading stories.
- Ask children to point out events and emotions from the story in the forest.
- Help them recognize the emotions of the characters to strengthen their empathy.
- Let them connect the challenges from the story to the icons in the forest.
Finding Creative Solutions
- Encourage children to choose solutions from the forest that could help the story’s characters handle their situations differently.
Making Feelings Feel Normal
- Talk about how it’s okay to feel both happy and sad sometimes by linking the characters’ experiences to The Magical Resilience Fores

By integrating The Magical Resilience Foresinto storytime, it becomes not just an educational tool, but also a fun and interactive way to help children develop emotional awareness and self reflection!