Boys and Girls Clubs of Kawartha Lakes and Taylor Newberry Consulting - How does your community experience “youth mental health”?
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The document discusses a mental health program called Flex Your Head that is run at Boys and Girls Clubs. It was designed collaboratively with Clubs to be fun, engaging, and non-clinical. The program aims to increase understanding of mental health and develop coping strategies among youth. It uses experiential activities and focuses on areas like emotions, relationships, self-care, and stress. Initial experiences running the program have been very positive, with increased knowledge for both youth and staff. Moving forward, there is interest in expanding youth participation, engagement, and community awareness of mental health issues.
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Boys and Girls Clubs of Kawartha Lakes and Taylor Newberry Consulting - How does your community experience “youth mental health”?
- 1. Q: How does your community experience “youth mental health”?
- 2. Show of Hands! Q: Approximately how many youth in Canada under the age of 19 experiences a mental health issue serious enough to affect his or her development and ability to participate fully in day- to-day life? 1 in 7, 3 in 5, 1 in 40? A: (1 in 7) Q: What age is most often associated with the onset of depressive symptoms? Childhood, Adolescence, or Adulthood? A: Adolescence Q: In Ontario, what age group experiences the greatest burden of mental health and addiction issues? 10-16, 18-24, 25-31? A: 18-24
- 4. Why Clubs Are The Perfect Context (And Awesome)! • Clubs already have youth coming through the doors! • Clubs are reaching a wide range of youth with varied level of risk. • Clubs are a safe environment where youth already feel comfortable with staff and with participating in programs.
- 5. But most importantly… • Clubs are experts about youth engagement and are striving hard to strengthen their capacity to serve youth.
- 6. Program Goals To promote mental health and resiliency among participating youth by: Increasing staff comfort around addressing mental health issues with youth. Creating awareness and enhancing participants understanding of mental health Helping youth develop strategies to cope with stress, promote healthy relationships and understand the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. Help youth translate their understanding of mental health into positive, anti-stigma attitudes and actions in their clubs and communities.
- 7. Universal Emphasizes normal experiences of sadness and anxiety.
- 8. The Continuum Approach Think of mental health as lying along a continuum, like the one below:
- 10. Theoretical Underpinnings • Acceptance and Commitment Theory
- 11. Theoretical Underpinnings • Cognitive Behavioural Theory "What we see depends on what we look for.” John Lubbock
- 12. Other Areas of Wellbeing Addressed in the Program • Social Problem Solving and Relationships
- 13. Other Areas of Wellbeing Addressed in the Program • Self-Care and Compassion
- 14. Other Areas of Wellbeing Addressed in the Program • Personal Values
- 15. Other Areas of Wellbeing Addressed in the Program • Stress and Coping
- 16. • All of this boring stuff is turned into fun stuff!
- 17. How do we know it’s fun? • Youth have told us! • Youth engagement in program design • Youth engagement in co-facilitation • Pilot testing • Evaluation • Ongoing communication with Clubs
- 18. Program Structure • Structured “Enough” • Not curriculum based, but a flow to the modules. • Detailed instructions for staff on learning objectives and activities. • Instructions on how to effectively lead the program. • Flexibility of choosing exercises.
- 19. Program Structure Beginning • Introducing the concepts • Building comfort and rapport Middle • Psycho- education • Experiential exercises End • Translating new knowledge and ideas to develop anti-stigma campaigns
- 20. A Module at a Glance! To Centre the Group 1. Making Space Complete this activity to start the module Recognizing Feelings and Bodily Expressions 1. Flower-Power 2. Human Scrabble 3. Emotional Symphony 4. Body Cues 5. What's Going On Activity 4 “Flower-Power” is central to this module and should be completed. Activities 5-8 are optional and build on the content of Activity 4. Try to do at least two of these. Exploring the Functions of Emotions 1. Function Versus Faux Pas 2. Emotional Pay-Offs These activities are central to this module and both should be completed Develop Personal Support Plans 1. My Social Network 2. Journey to Health and Well-Being 3. My Personal Plan 4. Handling Stormy Weather Activity 9 “My Social Network” is central to this module and should be completed. You should also complete at least one of Activity 10 and Activity 11. Activity 12 is optional, but a nice way to end this section. Feedback and Reflection 1. Moment in the Spot Light 2. My Ideas Complete both these activities at the end of this module. See Module 1 for Activity descriptions.
- 21. Why is it so successful in a club? What was our experience? What does this means going forward? FLEX YOUR HEAD
- 22. Why is Flex Your Head so successfulat a club? Maybe Not!
- 23. Why is Flex Your Head so successfulat a club? • Designed collaboratively with Clubs • Staff training • Evidence based • Youth engagement • Clubs are a gateway to youth • Non clinical setting • Relationships “The club is my family. Not sure where or if I would be here without them!”- Sam
- 24. What was our experience? Success! • Amazing • Activity focused • Youth engaged • Not intimidating • Program flexibility • Increased knowledge of youth • Increased knowledge for youth • Increased support network Challenges! • Attendance • Mood, maturity, interests of youth
- 25. What does this mean going forward? As a Boys & Girls Club and Community Increase youth participation Increased youth knowledge/support systems Increase in youth engagement in community Increase staff knowledge about mental health Modules as need arises Programming resource Community awareness about mental health Flex Your Head Continued sessions at Boys & Girls Clubs Inclusion of guest speakers/ co-facilitators Increased youth engagement in community/Boys & Girls Clubs In school sessions Community engagement
Editor's Notes
- To be interactive and get people thinking about mental health and what it means to them.
- Quick game to bring the conversation to a more focussed point and to situate the program in context.
- Following the activity, you could say: Given how your community experiences mental health and these facts, it shouldn’t be surprising that Clubs have repeatedly and increasingly identified a need for mental health resources and programming.
- You know this inside and out.
- I thought we should plug this program especially since Denise mentioned it three times during the planning conversation with Helen. This picture links to BGCC’s website where there is more information.
- Talk about how the goals are situated in the context of a universal program and how this ties to our understanding of mental health (next slide).
- I thought this figure could help to illustrate “normality” and unpack what we mean by universal a little further.
- The next slides are very quick introductions to the core theories underpinning the program.
- Quick sand metaphor from the program
- Talk about how activities are play based and experiential.
- I put structure at the end so that it linked with Rob’s content. I thought you could introduce it here by saying: We think one of the major reasons this program has been successful with youth and in Clubs is because of the way we structured it. The challenge we were given when we began working on this project was to create a program that did not take tremendous expertise to run, that could be used in a drop in afterschool program, and that youth would actually want to do. There are a lot of exercises that already exist, but psychologists seem to be big fans of worksheets, which is not the best way to engage kids, so we made a lot of adaptations to try and make the activities fun. Given that depression and anxiety are by far the most frequent symptoms that youth report, they became the focus of our program. We didn’t emphasize different mental illness categories because there is such overlap between many disorders(depression and anxiety, substance use, eating disorders). This is consistent with concerns of youth identified at the BGCC youth conference and also fits with the research literature on preventive programs. All clubs are somewhat different. In order for the program to useful in real world settings, we knew it needed to be flexible which is challenging. We have attempted to design a program that is most effectively run as a series of 12 sessions, but that consists of stand alone pieces that can be pulled out and used in a variety of ways. We have attempted to provide enough structure that staff can use it without specific in depth training. There are suggested scripts and we have tried to anticipate challenges that may present themselves. Of course, it is very tricky to have a program that is both very structured and very flexible.
- This just simply explains the flow of the program.
- This is obvious. The purpose was to highlight how modules are flexible. Transition to rob so he can talk about how modules played out in his Club and how the program unfolded more broadly. Can play Kawartha Lakes video to keep things engaging.