Tag: “mental health”

Virtual Focus Group

Washington County, RI Participants needed for Virtual Focus Group

Please join us to share your valuable feedback on immunization access and resources in your community! Topics include immunization access, barriers, resource improvements. Anyone over the age of 18 with or without children is welcome to join! Virtual meeting will be held via Zoom for 2 hours. You will receive compensation after you complete the focus group and a survey. We will have time to complete the survey at the end.

For more information, email Ashley Sanchez: asanchez@carelinkri.org

Pediatricians call for annual depression screening for all teens

Half of America’s depressed teens are reaching adulthood without being diagnosed. The American Association of Pediatrics has released new guidelines urging annual depression evaluations for ALL teens.

Only half of depressed youth are diagnosed before they reach adulthood, making the problem and treatment that much harder. In response, in February, the American Academy of Pediatrics call for annual, universal depression screening for all youth over the ages of 12, NPR (National Public Radio) reported.

The screening, Dr. Rachel Zuckerbrot told NPR, could be done during a well-patient visit, a sports’ physical or during another office visit. It could also be a questionnaire.

“Teenagers are often more honest when they’re not looking somebody in the face who’s asking questions,” she said. Zuckerbrot helped write the new guidelines.

The suggested questionnaires contain a range of questions. For instance, ‘Over the past two weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems: feeling down, depressed or hopeless? Or, little interest or pleasure in doing things?’

The new recommendations also call for families with a depressed teen to restrict the young person’s access to lethal means of harm.

URI joins Mental Health First Aid movement

South County Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds works with the University of Rhode Island (URI) to teach “mental health first aid” classes, just like CPR, but for the mind.

When the South County Coalition for Children and the region’s school districts won a grant for Youth Mental Health First Aid a few years ago, they were rightly thinking of kids. The YMHFA training is like CPR or a basic first aids program, but to teach people who work with youth how to identify early signs of mental health distress AND how to respond quickly until the professionals can be called.

Six hundred teachers, camp counselors, juvenile police officers, children’s librarians, parents, and others later, YMHFA is making a dent in South County.

Such a dent that when URI thought it might adopt the program for its students – not youth, but adults – South County Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds and the Coalition added international Mental Health First Aid trainings to the mix.

Read the excellent front-page Providence Journal story by G. Wayne Miller for the URI initiative. (Graphic courtesy of ProJo)

6 Youth and Adult Mental Health First Aid trainings scheduled, February-May

A training you should include with your CPR, lifesaving, and first aid background

You are just as likely to encounter someone in mental health crisis as one who needs CPR, if not more so, points out South County Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds (HBHM) Director Susan Orban.

“The statistics are daunting in South County,” she notes. “We have high rates of substance abuse from teens to elders. As many as one in three youths experience depression at least once every year. We have psychiatric hospitalizations and, sadly, suicides.”

In response, HBHM works with the international Mental Health First Aid organization to train parents, afterschool programmers, educators, camp counselors, juvenile police officers, and others in the curriculum for Youth Mental Health First Aid (YMHFA).

Free of charge, the 8-hour training focuses on being aware of early signs of concern and how to provide immediate support until professional help can be secured.

HBHM offers a similar program for adults helping adults: Mental Health First Aid (MHFA).

5 tips for talking with your teen about mental health

One of five teens experiences a mental health or substance use challenge EVERY YEAR. You need to keep the lines of communication open if you’re going to be able to help.

Talking to your teen about his or her mental health or substance abuse may be even harder than opening a conversation about sex. But it’s essential you have such conversations, and on a regular basis, states Mental Health First Aid USA.

“The reality is that more than 22 percent of people between the ages of 13-18 will experience a mental health or substance use challenge every year,” writes Danielle Poole.

Poole’s five tips are straightforward, if not challenging:

  1. Be genuine. Teens can see right through an adult who is “faking it.”
  2. Be careful about using slang. Stick with language you’re comfortable using.
  3. Allow for silence.
  4. Switch up the setting. Where you have a conversation about mental health or substance use could make you or the teen you’re talking to more comfortable.
  5. Don’t trivialize their feelings.