Mental Wellness and the Power of Healthy Communities
Of all the Battery Powered themes, Mental Health is one of our most personal journeys to date. With more than 600 members and $4 million of projected giving this year, this theme could also set new standards of Battery Powered’s impact potential.
Michael Birch, co-founder of The Battery and Battery Powered, recognized the collective opportunity—and the collective need—to tackle this often stigmatized topic head on. “It’s not an easy theme, it’s less conventional,” he said. “But we’re here because this touches us all in some way.”
Battery Powered has entered the fray, engaging in conversation with experts and organization leaders on the cutting edge of mental wellness. From stories of interventions in Uganda to local research labs, we were transported into the deeply personal, and incredibly hopeful, work of five of our 19 finalists on Thursday evening.
Watch the Mental Health Organization Night highlights here:
Rewriting Stigma, Building Empathy
The stigma surrounding mental illness is extreme, but not insurmountable. A new program from Sesame Workshop, Sesame Street and Autism: See Amazing in All Children, rewrites the narrative of children who suffer from the disorder to promote inclusion and acceptance.
“Sesame Street is a resource to bring people together,” Dr. Jeanette Betancourt said about the goals for the project. “Seventy-five percent of the headlines about autism are negative, not positive...and parents said the greatest difficulty they faced was to help their child not feel alone. We’re reducing stigma and appreciating the uniqueness that every child has.”
Aimed at families with very young children (ages 2-5), the program has been developed with input from parents, autism service providers and people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). It demonstrates commonalities children with ASD share with all children, helps reduce stigma around ASD and supports families with everyday routines. Organizers want the project to expand into an online course that provides multimedia materials to providers and families.
Resiliency Techniques to Transform Stress and Trauma
Mental health treatments are now as customized and varied as the mental health issues they address. Sean Mayberry started StrongMinds because he saw the lack of options for mental health care while working throughout Africa. In Uganda, where he’s focusing his next project, the numbers were shocking.
“Sixty million women suffer from depression in Uganda, rates that are 45 percent higher than in the US...it’s the number one disabler of women in Africa,” Mayberry said about the issue. “It’s where we can make the most difference, dollar for dollar.”
After 12 weeks in a StrongMinds program, women work together to become depression-free and come up with techniques that work for them within their own communities. Local practitioners learn and teach the basis of group talk therapy. “They become part of the solution,” Mayberry said.
Though on opposite sides of the globe, San Francisco middle school kids are also a part of the solution. The staff at the Center for Wellness and Achievement in Education (CWAE) use meditation training to aid mental wellness in students. After four years running the Quiet Time program at Visitacion Valley Middle School, Executive Director Laurent Valosek says that the program, grounded in transcendental meditation practice, has had transformational effects.
According to the data, it only takes two 15-minute sessions per day to help a low-performing school reduce anxiety and conflict and rise above the 80th percentile in academic achievement.
Tony Grandberry, a senior at Burton High School, experienced a lot of difficulties at home that he said made him shy, angry and depressed. When he was introduced to the Quiet Time program at school, he wasn’t immediately convinced. “I thought it was ridiculous to be honest,” he said. “But now, I would never be the person I am today without it. … I have goals for myself, I’m going to college.”
Quiet Time continues to expand into new schools with the goal of helping more young people empower themselves and their communities, creating a major shift in how the public views meditation and mental health.
Science and Technology to Reach More People in Need
“We have a commitment to science...and to social justice,” said UCSF Department of Psychiatry’s Matthew State. UCSF’s study in neuroplasticity trains young adults to adapt to neurological disorders like schizophrenia.
“We can now look at the brain at unprecedented scale and make big advances,” he said. UCSF is using the latest research to build simple interactive tests for healthier neuronetwork functioning that have immediate and long-term results. The goal is to work with young adults with early signs of mental illness before they deteriorate through remote training, accessible to anyone, anywhere.
Crisis Text Line is also using the latest technology to reach more people on the verge of life-threatening mental illness. The New York-based nonprofit uses text messages to connect with people and deliver counseling or, in more serious cases, respond to immediate calls for help while emergency services are on the way. “I wish I could say it was unusual, what we do,” said CEO Nancy Lublin, “but we do two active rescues a day.”
The mental health hotline blends the simplicity of text messaging with advanced applications that bring real-time results to the families, doctors and first responders involved in every encounter. Lublin said she hopes open source data and applications will help everyone get the tools they need to get through a crisis or live with a long-term mental illness.
“We use data to make us better and to make the world better,” she said. “Imagine if the system for first response in your community were as good as Uber. Or the pizza tracking app.”
Every participating Battery Powered organization is committed to advancing solutions that strengthen communities.
To read more about our 19 finalists with innovative projects in mental health, visit: https://www.thebatterysf.com/batterypowered/givingtheme/mental-health/projects.
Allocation Night for Mental Health is on March 31, 2016. Battery Powered members can RSVP here.
For any questions about the program, email [email protected].