Tagged With "end the stigma"
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2017 Children's Mental Health Report
Of the 74.5 million children in the United States, an estimated 17.1 million have or have had a mental health disorder — more than the number of children with cancer, diabetes and AIDS combined. Half of all mental illness occurs before the age of 14, and 75 percent by the age of 24. In spite of the magnitude of the problem, lack of awareness and entrenched stigma keep the majority of these young people from getting help. Children and adolescents struggling with these disorders are at risk...
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Destigmatizing mental health starts in schools (districtadministration.com)
After the city of Fishers, an Indianapolis suburb of about 90,000, had 13 suicides in 2016, city officials launched a campaign to destigmatize mental health issues - including in the school system. District Mental Health Coordinator Brooke Lawson and Assistant Superintendent of Staff and Student Services Michael Beresford discuss the challenges of addressing mental health issues, and how a student-launched club is helping to remove the stigma attached to mental illness. Tell us about Stigma...
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Do you live in Arizona, Hawaii, California, Nevada or the US Pacific Islands? Come to our no-cost mental and school mental health Winter Institute!
Do you live in Arizona, Hawaii, California, Nevada or the US Pacific Islands?If so...Check it out! 👇 NO COST. MENTAL HEALTH & SCHOOL MENTAL HEALTH WORKFORCE. AMAZING FACULTY. JANUARY 14, 15, & 16th! LONG BEACH, CA. JOIN US. 🤝 👏 Learn more here: http://bit.ly/mhttc-winterinstitute-flyer Register here: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07egq2f9gaebafa6bd&llr=8wdk4ubab
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Feeling Blue? Oregon Students Allowed To Take 'Mental Health Days' (npr.org)
Oregon's suicide rate has outpaced the national average for the past three decades. In an effort to combat stigma around mental illness, four local teen activists took matters into their own hands and championed a proposed state law. Oregon schools will now excuse student absences for mental or behavioral health reasons, as with regular sick days. In other words, if a student is feeling down, they can stay home from school without getting docked for missing classes. The law, signed by Gov.
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How Bibliotherapy Can Help Students Open Up About Their Mental Health (kqed.org)
Mental health concerns, like anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, can affect a student’s ability to concentrate, form friendships and thrive in the classroom. Educators and school counselors often provide Social and Emotional Learning programs (SEL) in order to help these students, as well as school-based therapeutic support groups. However, even in these forums, getting teenagers to speak about their problems can be challenging, especially when they feel like outsiders...
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How It Feels & How We Heal: Parenting with ACEs Chat Quotes (You Tube, Database, PDFs, Links)
Parenting with ACEs is sharing inspiration, information, and expertise from our chat series in 3 formats. Parenting with ACEs: How It Feels & How We Heal Quote Collection (pdf version below as well) Quotes Database (pdf version below as well) Links to Chat Transcripts and before and after-the-chat blog posts. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who shared, and who is doing the important work that is our mission (prevent ACEs, heal trauma, build resilience). We know that work happens...
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Illinois Governor Signs Law to Include Social-Emotional Screening in School Health Exams
Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner and Diana Rauner, President of Ounce of Prevention Fund _____________________________________________ Consistent with being the first state to adopt standards for social emotional learning (SEL) in the country, Illinois recently passed legislation (SB 565, Public Act 99-0927 ) to require social and emotional screenings for children as part of the their school entry examinations. Governor Rauner (R) signed the bill on January 20. It goes into effect June 1 of...
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Social-Emotional Life Skills Wrapped Up in Fun
This past school year Every Neighborhood Partnership (ENP) had a great opportunity to collaborate with two Fresno Unified Elementary schools, Fresno State, Fresno City College and Alliant International University to pilot two unique programs that help to build resiliency and social-emotional life skills. Through this collaborative partnership, ENP was able to facilitate two evidence-based programs that help students to build and develop social and emotional life skills through yoga and...
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Some 350 Florida Leaders Expected to Attend Think Tank with Dr. Vincent Felitti, Co-Principal Investigator of the ACE Study; Expert on ACEs Science
Leaders from across the Sunshine State will take part in a “Think Tank” in Naples, FL, on Monday, August 6, to help create a more trauma-informed Florida. The estimated 350 attendees will include policy makers and community teams made up of school superintendents, law enforcement officers, judges, hospital administrators, mayors, PTA presidents, child welfare experts, mental health and substance abuse treatment providers, philanthropists, university researchers, state agency heads, and...
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New Resource Guide for Child Sexual Abuse/Exploitation Prevention
Greetings, ACN Community! I wanted to share this fantastic new resource guide developed by one of the work groups from the Georgia Statewide Human Trafficking Task Force. This guide provides background on best practice, principles of prevention, identifying resources for the classroom, developing a prevention plan, age appropriate teaching suggestions, analysis of specific programs, and guidelines for implementation and evaluation. It is really quite thorough and is full of excellent ideas...
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Now available: recording of Chris Blodgett's talk on trauma-informed communities
Dr. Chris Blodgett spoke on Thursday, Nov 3rd at the Anchorage Loussac Library to a room of nearly 140 people and 60 more online. His talk "From ACEs to Action: How Communities Can Improve Well-Being and Resilience" was approximately two hours long. Access the webinar video, audio file, and slides here.
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Back to School: A Fall 2019 Trauma-Informed Campaign [kpjrfilms.co]
Stage screenings, educational roundtables and panel discussions featuring knowledgeable professionals for your community. Partner with KPJR FILMS for a screening of RESILIENCE and companion film PAPER TIGERS in the classroom, or facilitate a school-wide event to spotlight mental health awareness, trauma-informed practice, and provide Adverse Childhood Experience (ACEs) resources to students, parents, faculty and the community. To purchase, please use the 25% discount code at checkout below...
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Black Minds Matter (teachingtolerance.org)
Black people, including youth, are less likely to receive adequate care for mental health issues for a number of reasons: disparities in access to care, stigma about mental illness and lack of culturally competent mental health practitioners. According to a study published in the International Journal of Health Services , black children are about half as likely as white children to get mental health treatment. As the CBC task force, mental health experts and policy makers mull over ideas to...
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K12 is moving to ease food insecurity (districtadministration.com)
When the New York City Department of Education announced in September that all public school students will now receive free lunch, it joined a growing number of cities around the country trying to ease food insecurity and end the phenomenon of "lunch shaming." Previously about three-quarters of the city's 1.1 million public school students qualified for free or reduced-price lunch, but many didn't participate, often because parents hadn't completed necessary forms, or the student wanted to...
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This genius addition to schools has attendance up and bullying down. (upworthy.com)
“There are students that are being bullied because of the clothing that they're wearing,” says Emily Edwards, a social worker at an elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. “The Care Counts™ program installs washers and dryers in schools to improve attendance by giving kids access to clean clothes,” says Edwards. The school now has a washer and dryer on school property, and parents can come use them free of charge. “In our classroom, we've talked about how 7 out of 10 of us are at or below...
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Sausalito-Marin City district agrees to desegregate school [Marin IJ]
By Keri Brenner, August 9, 2019 for the Marin I. J. State Attorney General Xavier Becerra on Friday announced a historic settlement with the Sausalito Marin City School District that will lead to desegregation within five years. The announcement comes almost nine months after the AG’s office accused the district of deliberately creating a segregated school at Bayside Martin Luther King Jr. Academy in Marin City and violating state anti-discrimination laws. Becerra said the district’s former...
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Trauma-Informed Classrooms: Calming Corners
In our trauma-informed classrooms blog post last week, we talked about choices. We mentioned the benefit of having a space in the room where a child can go to help them calm down and become regulated. While this has become increasingly common at the elementary level, we have found that this is a tool that can work for students of all ages. Even when we survey adults about the things that help them to calm down when they are upset, one of the most common answers we hear is that they want time...
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Why I believe Gregory Williams, and his book, Shattered By The Darkness, will help save lives and revolutionize healthcare.
When you first hear about it, it sounds unlikely, fact that something that happened to someone in utero, at the age of two months, or four years, or any time in childhood, is what is killing them as an adult, or making them want to die, or making them want to hurt themselves or others. Yet the connection between childhood trauma and adult disease, mental illness, addiction, suicide, violence – most all of society’s ills – is as irrefutable as the myriad truths revealed about it in the...
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Why Mandating Mental Health Education in Schools is a Band-Aid on a Gaping Wound
Don’t get me wrong: of course I care deeply about the mental and physical health of children, including my own son’s. I don’t want students to suffer in silence and shame. But I am very concerned about just how this topic will be taught in schools.
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Why Resilience is Harmful and How to Improve it
Resilience is awesome, but also poses some risks and challenges. In 2012 a special edition of the Social Justice Studies academic research journal explored some of the risks. An intro and 5 academic research articles go very deeply into the topic of the "Dangers of Resilience Promotion." All the articles can be downloaded free at this link. https://journals.library.brocku.ca/index.php/SSJ/issue/view/70 I will attempt to summarize those 6 articles here in common language, cuz the articles are...
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Re: Mental Health in Finnish Schools: So Close to Perfection [thelancet.com]
It would be wonderful if we can find a way to improve parenting skills. However, a couple of the obstacles that I have most encountered, (I am from a low-income Mexican migrant community in the Central Valley of California) include: ability to invest time in events which may not include some form of economic benefit and one of cultural stigma. That is not to say that these obstacles are not being addressed and have seen progress in overcoming them. My question would be a broad one, which...
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Hope and Justice Art: Young people can submit their creations! (directingchangeca.org)
The Hope and Justice category was created under the guidance of educators, youth and young adults and community-based partners. While Directing Change will continue to offer it’s core film-focused contest and curriculums, the Hope and Justice category will accept and award submissions on a monthly basis and in multiple art forms. The Hope & Justice category is an opportunity for young people living through history to express their feelings, take action, and to inspire others through art.
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"A Better Normal" Community Discussion: Suicide Awareness and Community Cafes
Join us on Friday November 6, 2020 from noon to 1:00 PST as we come together and join Satya Chandragiri MD, Bonnie O’Hern RN, Denise PNP, & Michael Polacek RN for a discussion around the tender issue of suicide. Together we will discuss ways people and providers can support each other and encourage communities to take action to support one another around suicide prevention, crisis intervention, and the layers of culture and structural barriers to care. A special emphasis will be on...
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Community X Empowerment for adult children impacted by a parents addiction
SESSION 2: ADDICTIONS IN POP CULTURE Using our STRENGTH AND resilience to move forward with hope and HEALING. how does pop culture provide you with an emotional outlet? how does pop culture perpetuate the stigma of addictions? Pop Culture??! Yes, you heard right! Pop culture provides us with an opportunity to relate to or connect with someone, even if it is a character in a show or movie. In this session we will focus on our emotions and potential triggers and how we can move through them.
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Community X Empowerment for adult children impacted by a parents addiction
ROUND 3: COMMUNITY X EMPOWERMENT WITH GUEST PEARL WHITE QUILLS FOR A DRUMMING SESSION. Register Here: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/we...tickets-143805798013 --------------- Approximately 1/5 children (including adult children) have experienced their parent's addiction, so we KNOW that we are NOT alone in our experiences. But we also know that it can FEEL incredibly lonely. That's why we have created this series: In this 3 part series, Samantha Wettje ( 16 Strong Project ) and Agnes Chen (...
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How Care and Compassion for Educators Builds a Foundation for Children’s Resilience
Greater Richmond SCAN (Stop Child Abuse Now) has been working for 30 years to prevent and treat child abuse and neglect. SCAN advances its mission through five programs—the Child Advocacy Center, Family Support Program, Richmond CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), Circle Preschool, and Community Programs—which work together to provide the support, treatment, education, and advocacy needed to help build safe, stable, nurturing environments for children. SCAN’s Community Programs...
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Kathleen Soske
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Margot Coggins
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Building a Restorative Restart to School in the Fall
As we look towards the reopening of in-person instruction in the fall, planning and reimagining for a restorative restart to our school systems that emphasizes student and educator mental health is a priority. In addition, there is a windfall of one-time funding coming to districts from federal and local funds for just this purpose. Recently a wise educator said to me, ‘you know, if you want to get to the hearts and minds of school leaders to make changes for the fall you need to do so by...
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Re: Webinar: School Mental Health - From Implementing ➜ Funding (Moved to Jul 7th)!
Hello All, We've (school district of Broward County, FL) approved & contracted for "suicide evaluations" of "selected" students. Is this correct? I have not seen the suicide-evaluations but I have sat through the full yearly psychology presentation and the PD, professional development so teachers can better identify (target) children at risk (of being a problem in the future). I came away from these experiences convinced that district "solutions" like these are a big part of the problem.
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Social, Emotional and Mental Health Literacy in Schools
Building SEL and MHL are both critical to improving school mental health. According to recent discussions with thought-leaders at PBIS, it is recommended that SEL is integrated following school mental health and school wide positive behavior supports (Weist et al, 2018). We are missing the boat if we are excluding Mental Health Literacy (MHL) and mental health education training.
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New Guidance from Dept of Ed Recommends Urgent Attention To Mental Health
Over the course of 15 years of research, I and my team at Sharpen have created a comprehensive system to help school districts accomplish all of the recommendations released in yesterday's report from Dept of Ed; including: enhancing mental health literacy, reducing stigma about mental disorders, implementing evidence-based prevention practices and establishing an Integrated Framework of social, emotional and behavioral health support.
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The growing battle over school mental health and social-emotional learning
This is an urgent all call to those of us who believe in trauma-informed and healing-centered schools that support the whole person. After reading the recent NBC article “Parents protesting 'critical race theory' identify another target: mental health programs , ” I quickly put aside the blog I had been working on because I knew this was too important. Concerns from colleagues about the rising backlash against increased priorities of mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) have...
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Teachers like me face stigma and guilt when we take a day off — and it's a big reason behind the mass exodus from my field (newsbreak.com)
There's a stigma around teachers taking time off People still tell me on a regular basis how lucky I am to have summers off. When I recently told someone that I don't generally take the full summer off — last summer I spent two full weeks away taking courses, another few weeks lesson planning, and yet more time preparing for the coming year — they said they didn't think that was the norm. The data tells a different story: About one in six teachers work second (or third) jobs during the...
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STOPit and Sharpen - Trauma-informed technology to improve emotional wellness
Advancing school mental health requires a comprehensive, Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) following Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) best practices.
As presented for New Mexico Department of Health clinicians, this case study will outline strategies for improving emotional wellness and advancing behavioral health in schools through trauma-informed technology.
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Upcoming 6/9 Webinar and New Report and Brief: Community Strategies to Address California’s Digital Divide and Its Impact on Children and Families
PACEs Connection and the Essentials for Childhood (EfC) Initiative, a project of the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) and the California Department of Social Services (CDSS) have developed two new resources, “Community Strategies to Address California’s Digital Divide and Its Impact on Children and Families” Report and the “Digital Divide Brief: Community Strategies to Address California’s Digital Divide and Its Impact on Children and Families”
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3 case studies utilizing trauma-informed technology for school resilience
3 case studies utilizing adaptive tech to improve school resilience, featuring Dr. Martin Eaton (CA Schools), Ruth Schoonover (SC Schools), and Colin Bauer (SC Schools)
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Highlighting our four-part Trauma-Informed Learning Community Series!
The four-month Trauma-Informed Learning Community Series launched in San Diego, California, with Session #1 on May 20th, with seventy-five cross-sector service providers, agencies, and schools who work with teens, transitional-age youth, and families. Hosted by Diego Hills Central, Area Superintendent Lindsay Reese’s steadfast leadership supported the series through providing staff, food, color copies of materials, and the Street Team who are Learn4Life students from several schools in San...
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A 6th grade boy saw a problem with period poverty at his school and decided to do something (newsbreak.com)
Image: Courtesy of Deanna Hooker Author: To read Jacalyn Wetzel's article, please click here. Most 11-year-old boys are goofing off with their friends, staying up way too late yelling into gaming headsets or harassing their younger siblings, but not Jayden Hooker of North Carolina. Jayden has been spending his spare time finding a way to raise money to help end period poverty in his school district after an eye-opening experience with one of his classmates. The sixth grader explained that he...
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A Letter to Kyle
To mark the anniversary of the passage of the landmark legislation of the Georgia Mental Health Parity Act, we are sharing a letter written a year ago by Roland Behm, Co-founder of the Georgia Mental Health Policy Partnership, Board Member and Former Board Chair, American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Georgia Chapter. The letter is to his son, Kyle, who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2010 as a junior in college and died by suicide in August 2019.
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Psychologist Enrique Echeburúa: ‘People who die by suicide want to stop suffering, not to stop living’ (msn.com)
Enrique Echeburúa at his office, in San Sebastián, Spain. © Javier Hernandez Juantegui (EL PAÍS) To read more of Daniel Mediavilla's article, please click here. Enrique Echeburúa (San Sebastian, Spain, 72 years old), Professor Emeritus of Clinical Psychology at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), says that when a suicide occurs, there are other victims beyond the deceased, and they do not receive adequate support. “The first thing [we need to do] is make it easier for the family...
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Mindfulness / Resiliency "Shop" for Schools
Announcing the Sharpen Shop with an entire collection of resiliency gear that has powerful messages of hope and healing. In particular the award-winning "5 Minute Mindfulness" program has been deployed in resilient schools and community suicide prevention initiatives for over 10 years.
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Healing the Generations - Historic, Two-Day Event Virtual Event On Trauma, Race, and The Body
Presented by Clifford Beers Community Care Center, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation and KPJR Films, Healing the Generations is a two-day conference which brings together trauma-informed authors, leaders, and changemakers whose work focuses on resilience, trauma, and anti-racism. REGISTER HERE Collectively, we recognize the health implications that grief, loss, political unrest, and racial trauma have on the human body. We are convinced that in our families, communities, and ancestors,...