Today marks the beginning of Mental Health Week in Canada. This year, the Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) is issuing a call to be kind, reminding us all that we have the capacity to be compassionate. CMHA National CEO Margaret Eaton says that "Compassion is the practice of meeting suffering—whether our own or the suffering of others—with kindness."

As part of its toolkit for this year's Mental Health Week, CMHA put together a guide for teachers to help create a compassionate classroom. I find the three proposed activities both useful and inspiring: building a chain of kindness (my favourite), playing kindness bingo, and keeping a compassion journal.

The objective of the first activity is to cultivate a culture of compassion by crafting a kindness chain. The teacher gives students strips of paper to serve as individual links of the kindness chain. Whenever a student demonstrates an act of kindness towards themselves or others, the teacher encourages them to add a link to the chain. The teacher leads a discussion about the contagious nature of compassion and the idea that every act, no matter how small, contributes to an overall feeling of kindness and compassion in the classroom. The growing chain—representing the accumulation of individual acts of kindness—serves as inspiration, encouragement and motivation for further acts of compassion.

If you aren't in a classroom, you can still apply the idea of a chain of kindness in your own life by noticing acts of compassion that you offer to others, receive from others, witness or give to yourself. Examples from the second classroom activity—kindness bingo—that are applicable to all include complimenting someone, reading your favourite book, holding the door open for someone, letting someone go ahead of you, and asking someone for help. If making a chain of kindness (or perhaps a trail of colourful sticky notes on your wall) is not your thing, then you might consider the third classroom activity: a compassion journal. Record acts of kindness you witness or perform, along with a brief description of the situation.

In its fact sheet The mental health impacts of compassion, CMHA says: "Compelling scientific evidence suggests that giving compassion, receiving compassion, and allowing ourselves to experience self-compassion are all very beneficial to our mental health." It further explains that compassion can help lift feelings of depression, cause a spike in happiness, make someone feel more optimistic, and lead to a domino effect as people witnessing compassion are inspired to extend kindness themselves.