ResearchImpact helps to launch Mobilizing Minds: Pathways to Young Adult Mental Health

David Phipps, ResearchImpact/York University
Tara Syed, Mobilizing Minds/Trent University

Mobilizing Minds is a $1.5M CIHR funded 5 year KM project which is a partnership between young adults and academic researchers (jointly lead by York and UManitoba). The project will develop tools to inform young adults’ decisions about mental health and will also study the process of KM and young adult/adult partnership. This past weekend (Feb 28 and March 1) the young adult leaders and adult mentors met at the Centre of Excellence for Youth Engagement in Toronto to launch the youth engagement aspect of the project. Young adults received an over view of the project and learned the basics of KM through the KM Rap (which may, or may not, be coming to a video near you…). The young adult leaders brainstormed ideas for young adult engagement on all the project teams and the young adult leaders identified two projects of particular interest to them.

1) By examining key organizations that have already undertaken the integrated health team approach, the young adult team will create a model for the integration of health care professionals into centres where normally only primary care physicians would be accessible. Another goal in this initiative is to develop the structure for a youth advisory board to provide feedback to the health team and to identify a youth advocate to help navigate new comers to the system.

2) Increase public awareness and education about treatment options (includes conventional medicine, alternative therapies, and psychological/cognitive therapies) available to those experiencing mental health issues and disorders. Efficacy, side effects and withdrawal symptoms, if any, will be included in the discussion of each treatment option.

Tara Syed is a 3rd year Biology major at Trent University and, partnered with ResearchImpact’s David Phipps, is the young adult leader on the Community Partnership Team. In addition to getting community and practitioner input into the Mobilizing Minds project Tara identified that it was equally important to get young adult input into policy decisions in community and practitioner organizations. Tara and David agreed to identify lead community and practitioner champions in Toronto and Peterborough and jointly develop a strategy for community engagement on the project.

A big thank you to those community organizations who have already given their support to the project. You’ll be hearing from us.

KM Intern secures $130,000 Trillium Grant for Community Outreach/Education at Peterborough Youth Shelter

Naomi Nichols is a PhD Candidate at the York Faculty of Education who was a KM Summer Intern in 2007. Naomi’s placement was with the Youth Emergency Shelter (YES) in Peterborough.   She began her work at YES as a participant observer: helping in the recreation program; and the Children’s Aid Society day program; attending appointments with shelter residents as an advocate; and helping shelter staff. She conducted preliminary case-file analysis, creating a data-base that points to the various agencies/services YES clients are using. She also conducted interviews with shelter staff, other social service professionals and shelter residents. This fieldwork informed her development of a life-skills/transitioning program for shelter users. The KM Unit’s support of Naomi’s work with YES helped her secure a $130,000 grant for YES to develop a Community Outreach and Education program for their clients. The program includes services like Transitioning Life-Skills, where “[a] coordinator leads a team of one-on-one workers who pair up with and mentor individual young people. Each young person and his or her mentor enact a “transitioning plan” based on an individual’s lived experiences and goals” (Nichols, 15). The plan is meant to help the young person develop greater autonomy and gradually transition to independent housing, employment, and health management (Nichols, 15). Thanks to Naomi’s work, the Trillium grant continues to enhance the delivery of social services by YES to marginalized youth who often face difficulties accessing the available resources.

 

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Nichols, Naomi. (2008). Walking the line: Doing community-situated institutional ethnography. A paper presented at the Society for Social Problems Annual Meeting, Boston, USA.