Culturally Grounded Life Skills for Youth (Healing of the Canoe) is a curriculum for Native youth focused on suicide and substance abuse prevention. It was designed to be adapted by Native communities using community-specific traditions and beliefs to strengthen youths’ connection to their communities and cultures, and strengthen their hope and optimism. The curriculum uses […]
Innovative Interventions
The Friendship Bench Project: How ‘Grandmothers’ Help Others Fight Depression and Anxiety
Mental Health America, an advocacy group, paints a bleak picture of psychological care in the United States. Almost 20 percent of Americans suffer from a mental illness, according to data from 2016, but more than half of these individuals never receive help. Barriers such as limited access to mental health care, the cost of treatment and a […]
Yoga N Da Hood – Teaching People In Under Served Communities the Art of Self-Healing and Self Love through Yoga and Mindfulness
When Ebony Smith began practicing yoga, she couldn’t help but feel like an outsider. “There was something about it that I absolutely loved,” she said. “But I didn’t like going to practice, because nobody ever looked like me and I just always kind of felt awkward.” Smith, 35, picked up yoga about seven years ago […]
Hope Squad: School-Based Peer Advocate Program To Prevent Suicide
Hope Squad® is a school-based peer support program that empowers selected students to take action to improve the school environment. Hope Squad members are trained to recognize if they or their peers are at risk for suicide as well as how to encourage peers to seek help from a trusted adult. Research indicates that most […]
Familias Unidas: Parent-Centered Prevention of Risky Behaviors Among Hispanic Youth
Familias Unidas™ Preventive Intervention is a multilevel family-based intervention designed to prevent problem behaviors in Hispanic adolescents. The program engages Hispanic immigrant parents in an empowerment process in which they first build a strong parent-support network and then use the network to increase knowledge of culturally relevant parenting, strengthen parenting skills, and then apply these […]
EMPATHY: Program Designed To Promote Mental Health Skills in Youth
A University of Alberta pilot program designed to promote mental health skills in youth significantly lessened cases of depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. The EMPATHY (Empowering a Multimodal Pathway Towards Health Youth) program, which ran in Red Deer public schools from 2013 to 2015, was offered to more than 6,000 youth in grades six through […]