35 - Children's Mental Health Champion
Project Description:
This project will work to bridge the gap between education, healthcare, and community related to childhood mental health across the state of South Dakota. This project will work to provide digestible, accurate, and actionable information about mental health to those interacting and working with children. This initiative is vital to facilitate better understanding, support early identification, implement intervention that is evidence-based, and increase awareness related to the impact of mental health as it intersects between education, healthcare, and community. This will be done through all three pillars of connecting and creating family-school-healthcare-community partnerships, supporting early identification and intervention/evidence-based treatment, and working to prevent mental disorders and promote mental health.
There are significant gaps across environments related to community members' and professionals' knowledge of mental health when working with children. Often community members and professionals do not know about mental health outside of what they have seen through the media or their own personal experiences, which may not be an accurate or true representation of mental health. Providing digestible and accurate information about mental health to those interacting and working with children is imperative. An additional challenge faced in South Dakota is the limited number of providers trained to work with children across our large rural state, limiting access to quality services for many. By increasing knowledge and availability of resources related to mental health across educators, healthcare providers, and community members, we can better meet the needs of our children because mental health support can be accomplished by all.
Keyword(s):
Mental Health, Children's Mental Health, Behavioral Health systems of care
Core Function(s):
Training Trainees, Developing & Disseminating Information, Continuing Education/Community Training
Area of Emphasis
Education & Early Intervention, Health-Related Activities
Target Audience:
Students/Trainees (long or intermediate trainees), Community Trainees / Short term trainees, Professionals and Para-Professionals, Family Members/Caregivers, Adults with Disabilities, Children/Adolescents with Disabilities/SHCN, Legislators/Policy Makers, General Public
Unserved or Under-served Populations:
Racial or Ethnic Minorities, Disadvantaged Circumstances, Limited English, Geographic Areas, Reservation, Rural/Remote, Urban
Primary Target Audience Geographic Descriptor:
State, National
COVID-19 Related Data:
N/A
