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Engage Aotearoa went to the Far North LifeHack Weekend in mid-2014 and met Ilana Hill, a Year 9 teacher at Taipa Area School with a passion for suicide prevention. She had the idea to use the content in The Coping Kete to get her students talking about coping and at the same time engage them meaningfully in the Static Image component of the Year 9 English curriculum.
Ilana says “I have a year 9 class that is full of energy and disparate personalities. I was very worried about engagement in English and I was seeking ways to make learning relevant and meaningful.” She adds, “I was really excited about helping make useful information about how to cope with depression visually accessible. I got the idea that perhaps … it could even be a subtle vehicle to teach them some of their own coping techniques for when times get tough.”
I hoped students would develop compassion and tools to become resilient as they progress through their teenage years in a very low decile area where they have to face a lot of negativity in their lives.”
Students were motivated by the knowledge that the top two posters would actually be shared on the Engage Aotearoa website to help more people find what they need. In this way, the project gave students an opportunity to make a real difference to their communities. Mindful of the sensitivity of mental-health related topics in school, Ilana worked with Engage Aotearoa and her school principal to set safe guidelines for the project and incorporated these into her existing lesson plans for the Year 9 static image curriculum.
Engage Aotearoa and the CMHRT board of trustees would like to thank Ilana for leading this partnership and giving permission for her material to be turned into a resource for others (this will be available on the Engage Aotearoa website shortly). The team also sends out a massive thanks to the students at Taipa Area School for their amazing work in creating graphic designs that share ideas that matter. You all did a fantastic job and in the words of the service director “we wish we had space for all of them!”
Check out the top two designs below and help us share these young Kiwis’ work as far and wide as it can go.
Judges notes: “This poster design stood out for its simplicity and the importance of the message that Aaliyah chose to highlight from The Coping Kete. One of the most important things for surviving the tough times, is being allowed to have tough times. So much of our suffering comes from not being allowed to feel what we feel. Strategy 29 in The Coping Kete is all about telling ourselves that it is okay/acceptable to feel the whole spectrum of emotions, instead of trying to stay in the ‘positive’ ones all the time and judging ourselves for the ‘negative’ ones like anger, anxiety, sadness, jealousy or disgust.”
Judges Notes: “Destiny chose to highlight a message that is central to most effective suicide prevention and mental-health promotion strategies. We liked the idea that a young person chose to share this particular message with other young people. In the words of a young person we met at KiwiFoo Camp in May, “kids are sick of adults telling them what to do”. Here we have a 14 year-old sharing the message that talking helps. We liked how the cup shape suggests sitting down to a cup of tea with someone and the words Destiny chose to fill the cup with might give people a few ideas of who to reach out to. It also says something about the range of people we need to get involved in creating truly supportive communities.”
The following is a deatiled release on ‘Trauma and “Trauma-Informed” Care’ from SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Association of the USA).
The recently released Treatment Improvement Protocol (TIP) 57, Trauma-Informed Care in Behavioral Health Services (Trauma TIP), offers behavioral health service providers and program administrators information and practices to assist people who have experienced repeated, chronic, or multiple traumas. People who experience trauma are more likely to exhibit pronounced symptoms and consequences, including substance misuse, mental illness, and other health problems. For this reason, addressing trauma is a public health priority under the SAMHSA Trauma and Justice Strategic Initiative.
Trauma results from an event or a series of events that subsequently causes intense physical and psychological stress reactions. The individual’s functioning and emotional, physical, social, and spiritual health can be affected. Some of the most common traumatic experiences include violence, abuse, neglect, disaster, terrorism, and war. People of all ages, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, and economic conditions may experience trauma. Trauma can affect a person’s functional ability – including interacting with others, performing at work, and sleeping – and contribute to responses – including isolation, anxiety, substance misuse, and overeating or under eating – that can increase health risks. Behavioral health service providers can benefit greatly from understanding the nature and impact of trauma and the benefits of a trauma-informed approach.
Adopting trauma-informed policies may require a fundamental cultural shift within organizations intended to promote a greater sense of equality and safety. This may lead to changes in governance and leadership; organizational policy; engagement and involvement of people in recovery, trauma survivors, consumers, and family members; cross-sector collaboration; services and interventions; training and workforce development; protocols and procedures; quality assurance; budgeting and financing; evaluation; and the physical environment of the organization.
1. It’s okay to not be okay
It is not a weakness to experience depression, anxiety, and other forms of distress as a teenager. It is quite common! Society tells us that we should look and behave in certain ways, and that we have to fit a certain stereotype in order to simply be accepted. I didn’t think it was okay to be struggling with depression when I was a teenager. I thought it meant I was weak and worthless. But admitting that I was not okay and that I did not know who I was took me on a journey of incredible discovery. I came out the other end of the dark tunnel with strength, purpose, and value for my life. I wouldn’t change a thing.
2. Connection is the key
It is incredibly lonely when experiencing depression – and I almost think it is more lonely when you experience depression as a teenager, during the life-stage in which you are trying to figure out how and where you fit in the world. At a time in your life when you are trying to fit in, you fall into a dark hole that isolates you – giving you no opportunity to find your place in the world. I isolated myself and was anxious to interact with anyone. However, the most useful thing for me was the one thing I did not want to do – it was to spend time with friends, family, and people who understood what I was going through.
“When you are at the bottom of the dark hole, it feels like every movement causes you to fall deeper. It is extremely difficult to see that each step actually takes you closer to the light of day.”
3. Asking for help actually helps!
Looking back, I had friends around me going through similar struggles, and I wanted them to be honest, ask for help, and let me support them. I saw them as courageous when they confronted their fears, darkness, and failures head-on. I learned that it takes more courage to be vulnerable, ask for help, and accept others’ support than it does to wrestle alone in the dark. I learned that friends, family, and professionals actually wanted to help me. Each time that I reached outside of myself and asked for help, my burden was lightened a little bit because it was shared with another. Even if the problem was not solved by the other person, at least I felt more understood, more loved, and less alone.
4. Balance between trust and supervision
I am sure my adolescent self would not admit this, but I’ve learned from looking back at my experience that it was helpful to have a balance of trust and supervision from my parents. I think this balance is largely determined by what is safe for us. As I built up trust with my parents, the amount of supervision I needed decreased. I found that, as my parents trusted me more, I learned to trust myself more – giving me confidence in myself. From my view, the helpful parent provides love, encouragement, support, practical help, and compassionate supervision.Blaming, minimising, or not being taken seriously are not helpful. Being listened to, provided with appropriate help, and shown compassion are essential.
5. It is never the end
There is always hope. I know clichés like “there’s a light at the end of the tunnel” often don’t provide much reassurance at the time, but it turns out they are actually true. When you are at the bottom of the dark hole, it feels like every movement causes you to fall deeper. It is extremely difficult to see that each step actually takes you closer to the light of day. But others can see it. Others can see the bigger picture because they are not in the dark hole with you. In these times, when all hope seems to have escaped you – I learned that I could rely on at least one person around me to hold the hope for me. When I could not see it, they could. When I could not believe, they believed. They held my hope, and gave it back to me when I could hold it again. It is never the end. There is always hope.
Emma Edwards
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About the author: Emma Edwards is currently completing her doctorate degree. She was previously a registered mental-health professional, working in youth and adult mental-health settings. Her own service-user and family experience with mental-health struggles sparked her passion to support others and make a difference to those struggling to cope with difficult times.
Recovery Notes is an Engage Aotearoa project that asks people to share the top five tips and insights they have learned from or about their personal experiences of mental-health recovery or being a supporter.
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Copyright (c) Engage Aotearoa, 2014
In support of this year’s Mental-Health Awareness week theme, ‘Keep Learning’, the team at Engage Aotearoa have added two new pages of links to the Online Resources Pack for you to explore. Find new online sources of distraction/entertainment, self-help tools, information, support and recovery stories – and keep learning for Mental-Health Awareness Week and beyond.
Click here to browse and save a copy of the updated file
New links include…
Find more Recovery Information Packs on the Engage Aotearoa website.
New Ways of Working in Mental Health Services: A qualitative, comparative case study assessing and informing the emergence of new peer worker roles in mental health services in England
~ National Institute for Health Research, July 2014
“Conclusions: Key barriers to, and facilitators of, peer worker role adoption were identified, including valuing the differential knowledge and practice that peer workers brought to the role (especially around maintaining personally, rather than professionally defined boundaries); maintaining peer identity in a role of work; changing organisational structures to support peer workers to remain well in their work; and challenging organisational cultures to empower peer workers to use their lived experience. Recommendations for future research include developing a theoretical framework articulating the change mechanisms underpinning ‘what peer workers do’, piloting and formally evaluating the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of peer worker interventions, and mixed-method research to better understand the impact of working as a peer worker.”
It’s Mental Health Awareness Week from 6-12 October 2014 and World Mental Health Awareness Day on October 10th. Seeing as every week is Mental-Health Awareness Week at Engage Aotearoa, now seems like a good time to give everyone an update about what’s on the horizons here.
Recovery Notes: Recovery Notes is a new series of blog articles by people with lived experience of recovery highlighting the lessons they have learned about or from their experiences. The CMHRT board of trustees are in progress with writing contributions that share the lessons they have learned from their journeys and the first one is out today. If you would like to try your hand at writing a Recovery Notes blog article, submissions are welcome from anyone with lived experience of recovery or being a supporter. Click here to read the Recovery Notes Writing Guidelines first.
Upgrading The Community Resources Directory: Engage Aotearoa went to a LifeHack Weekend earlier this year and got some help to get started with upgrading The Community Resources Directory so you can create a customised directory filled with the services for your region. The web-app is still in development and the volunteer directory editor, Cath, is continuing to add new services to the directory as we work on creating a truly nation-wide resource. You might notice the downloadable document got shorter recently – the team made the font smaller, to fit more on each page, so there’s actually more information listed than there was before. Don’t forget to keep sending your directory additions to Cath by emailing directory@engagenz.co.nz
One Year Anniversary of The Butterfly Diaries Vol 1: It has been one year since the launch of The Butterfly Diaries and the team has distributed over 700 books from Kaitaia to Invercargill and everywhere in between. Copies have been ordered by teenagers for themselves and their friends, worried family members, schools, counsellors, psychologists, psychiatrists, GP doctors, corrections facilities and universities. With no promotional budget and no funding outside of community donations, the team at Engage Aotearoa are pleasantly surprised that so many copies have already found wings. You can help raise awareness of the books by printing and placing a poster somewhere public or sharing one of the book reviews on social media (find them here and here).
The Butterfly Diaries Vol. 2: Engage Aotearoa continues to work on The Butterfly Diaries Volume 2 and it’s very close to publication. Volume 2 shares the stories of Jane and Tess. Jane has a history of difficult family relationships and intense emotions. Tess has a history of childhood trauma, domestic violence and dissociative identity disorder (often known as multiple personalities). Written by Genevieve McClean and Maureen Irvine, Between the Sun and the Moon, and Rebuilding Camelot tell two true stories of surviving the hardest parts of humanity and finding a way to thrive despite it all. Engage Aotearoa needs your help to publish The Butterfly Diaries Volume 2 and keep Volume 1 in print. Make a tax-deductible donation for Mental Health Awareness Week.
The Coping Kit Smart Phone App: It’s still coming! Good things take time.
On Tuesday 30 September, tune into Take it From Us to hear from to a young psychologist who is a champion of alternative natural therapies, especially mindfulness, to manage mental health. Special guest Vikki Baird has already done some hard yards in mental health and gained some insights as a result of working in intensive residential rehabilitation.
Listen live on 104.6FM at 12.30pm or online www.planetaudio.org.nz
OR if you missed the broadcast, listen for the next seven days: www.planetaudio.org.nz/takeitfromus
And don’t forget the Facebook page @ Facebook.com and type ‘take it from us’ in the search box; contact Sheldon.brown@framework.org.nz for any feedback and comment/suggestions for shows.
Te Pou has created a new utility for mental-health professionals. The HoNOS tool assists clinicians to use the HoNOS suite of outcome measures.
The dashboard gives you a deeper understanding of your caseload with snapshot statistics – input your entire caseload to get the full benefit of features such as number of cases, severity, ethnicity, gender profile and more. The HoNOS tool keeps track of who is due or overdue to be rated.
The tool is also available as a web version and will be launched for iOS devices in the coming months. Your data will sync across devices so you can use your computer, phone and tablet – whatever suits you best. Download the app from Google Play for use on your tablet or smartphone. Or open Google Play on your android device and search ‘HoNOS’.
Fair Funding aims to re-establish an equitable funding system and stop the decline of the NGO system of community care. This follows exhaustive attempts to resolve these issues over successive years but with no meaningful response from DHBs. They continue to ignore the situation.
New Zealand must see a return to fair funding practices for NGOs to be at their best and fully responsive to community needs. Every year many DHBs compromise this and as a result are placing great strain on a previously effective working partnership with the NGO sector.
Unless DHBs take immediate corrective action, New Zealand faces a future without sufficient community-based mental health and addiction care. This would see a return to days gone by when people couldn’t access services in a timely way, resulting in them and their families in distress, and crisis and emergency services overrun with people desperate for help.
