Mental Health
This word describes a feeling of intense worry or nervousness about things that might happen.
Anxiety
This happens when your body needs more and more of a substance to feel the same effect it used to.
What is tolerance?
This legal stimulant found in coffee, tea, and energy drinks can speed up the heart rate and make it hard to fall asleep.
Caffeine
This trusted adult at school is someone students can speak to confidentially about mental health concerns or personal problems.
Guidance Counsellor
True or False: Vaping is completely safe because it does not contain tobacco leaves.
False— vaping still contains harmful chemicals, including nicotine.
This is the name for when someone feels very sad, empty, or hopeless for weeks or months at a time.
Depression
When a person keeps using a substance even though it is causing serious harm to their health, relationships, or school life, this is the term used
Addiction
This highly addictive chemical is found in cigarettes, chewing tobacco, and vaping products, and is very harmful to the lungs.
Nicotine
Getting enough of this every night — about 9 to 11 hours for Grade 5 and 6 students — is one of the most powerful things you can do for your mental health.
Sleep
These are drugs that a doctor legally prescribes to a patient to help treat pain, anxiety, or other health conditions.
Prescription Drugs
These are healthy actions — like exercise, deep breathing, or talking to a friend — that help us manage stress and difficult emotions.
Coping Strategies
These unpleasant physical and emotional symptoms occur when someone who depends on a substance suddenly stops using it.
Withdrawal
This category of drug slows down the brain and body, making you feel sleepy or relaxed — alcohol is the most common example.
Depressant
This healthy coping strategy involves writing down your thoughts and feelings in a notebook instead of turning to a harmful substance.
This word describes a substance that is against the law to produce, sell, or possess in Canada.
Illegal or controlled substance
This part of your overall health includes your thoughts, feelings, and ability to handle stress — it is just as important as physical health.
Mental Health
This is the word for when the brain and body become physically reliant on a substance to function normally each day.
Physical Dependence
These drugs alter a person's perception and can cause them to see, hear, or feel things that are not really there.
Hallucinogens
This describes the positive influence friends can have on each other to make healthy and safe choices — the helpful opposite of negative peer pressure.
Positive peer influence
Non-smokers who breathe in smoke from someone else's cigarette are exposed to the same harmful chemicals. This is known as second-hand smoke, or this term.
Passive smoking
This mental health condition involves extreme mood swings between emotional highs and deep lows, and requires professional treatment.
Bipolar Disorder
This part of the brain controls decision-making and impulse control, is highly affected by substance use, and is not fully developed until a person's mid-20s.
Prefrontal Cortex
This natural chemical messenger in the brain creates a "feel-good" signal and is heavily involved in why addictive substances are so hard to stop using.
Dopamine
This free Canadian service, available by phone at 1-800-668-6868 or by text at 686868, gives young people confidential mental health support anytime.
Kid's Help phone
According to Canadian health guidelines, using cannabis before this age is especially risky because the brain is still actively developing.
Age 25