Cascade Mental Health Care Starts Empowered Youth of Washington Initiative
The ChronicleJul 02, 2020
Shortly before the COVID-19 outbreak, clinicians held a few workshops at
The EYW community can be joined on Facebook at www.facebook.com/empoweredyouthofwa.
"We've developed social media platforms, we've reached thousands of people at this point, and we publish information about resources available in
The funding for the EYW comes from the
Using a portion of the funding, Cascade Mental Health Care was able to fund suicide prevention training within the juvenile detention center in
Wohletz said that the benefits of the EYW program and talking with students about mental health are enormous.
"In
Wohletz said that in fall, she would like to get students involved in producing some of the content that gets posted to the social media account to give the youth more control over the program.
"There's a lot of things that happen around
Wohletz said that the more mental health is talked about the less stigma there is around the topic and younger people can realize that they are not alone in how they feel. The EYW aims to provide the youth with resources and mentors to provide support or more information.
"We want kids to know that it's OK to have certain struggles or issues, it's a part of life but if you don't seek help or if you don't talk about it you're just going to bottle that up and it's going to make it worse," said Wohletz. "If you don't have the information then you don't get to empower yourself."
At the high school level, Hill said she worked on "empowering students by helping them identify who they want to be" and breaking down the stigma around talking about mental health and asking for help.
"If you empower people with knowledge and understanding there are fewer misunderstandings that lead to the bullying that happens in school and the rumor mill in highs schools which spreads like wildfire on social media," said Hill.
Hill said the program hopes to identify some student "ambassadors" to take on some of the responsibilities of posting on social media and to continue the in-person workshops when students return to school in the fall.
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