Bullying Prevention Awareness

Post written by this month's guest blogger, Chloe Brandon #CMSHS Student

CMSFHS is all about bullying prevention! At our October meeting, there were a total of 17 students that attended. The meeting this month covered the effects that bullying has on a person, such as depression and low self-esteem. We learned how and when bullying starts and what we can do to prevent it. We also discussed the importance of making a stand against bullying. The STAR challenge of October was to take a selfie in orange to promote

 “Unity Day” on October 22^nd. 

Students at CMSFHS are excited about Friends of MHINDS this year and are ready to be educated on mental health! We are also very thankful for the discount provided from Casey’s pizza for our lunch. 

More information about bullying prevention can be found at the links listed below.

National Bullying Prevention Center: http://www.pacer.org/bullying/nbpm

Stopbullying.gov: http://www.stopbullying.govtopics/warningsigns/index.html

The Trevor Project: http://www.thetrevorproject.org

Eyesonbullying.org: http://www.eyesonbullying.org

Teaching Tolerance: http://www.teachingtolerance.org

Health Resources and Services: http://stopbullyingnow.hrsa.gov

National Crime Prevention Council: http://www.ncpc.org/cyberbullying

The National Child Traumatic Stress Network: http://www.nctsn.org/resources/publicawsareness/bullying-prevention-awareness-month

 

Chloe Brandon

#CMSHS FoM Student Member

Twitter: @chloenicole99
Instagram: chloenicolebrandon

CMSHS Baseball Team Supports Children's Mental Health Awareness!

This month, the CMSHS team will participate in the Dinger Bats / Project Connect Children's Mental Health Awareness Campaign. The team is pictured below wearing green armbands created by Dinger Bats and Project Connect for all high school baseball teams in White, Gallatin, and Saline Counties. Team members were encouraged to wear their armbands and post photos to social media in their uniforms and armbands. High school sports team members are role models to younger athletes and we appreciate their influence in raising awareness about children's mental health in the month of May!

CMSHS Varsity Baseball Team & Coach Alan Jackson

Fr/So Baseball Team Members

Jr/Sr Baseball Team Members

It's #MindfulMarch

     What does #MindfulMarch mean? It's a social marketing hashtag that promotes being 'mindful' of something this month... we choose that it refers to mental health! And that's what our Friend of MHINDS meetings are about this month -- #CMSHS is definitely with us!

      Being 'mental health mindful' can mean several things in itself also. We wanted to use our meeting today to encourage students to be mindful of depression and suicide prevention. Not only did we share some excellent online references, but we also engaged everyone in a discussion of using the term "ouch" when you know something is being said that is stigmatizing, discriminating, or just plain hurtful. Our FoM team member, April Scales, has used the "ouch" concept in many of her activities as the Project Connect Cultural Competence Coordinator, and we think it is a message worth sharing everywhere.

     March brings into focus the coming National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day planning. The day of celebration is not until May 8th, but if we don't start planning now, we'll be behind! The students suggested all kinds of great ideas about how they wanted to get their community on board with children's mental health awareness. Over the coming weeks, we'll be assisting them in making sure their ideas become realities! (See more photos below)

     We are also starting a new contest this month to see who can get the most social media shares from an original created post. We discussed with students some ideas, and then they were busy creating their message. We can't wait to see how these messages make their way across the web!
And finally, today's congrats at #CMSHS belong to Audra Betz! She's our newest FoM SM STAR. Check out a key 'tweet' of hers below. We love it Audra!

@FriendofMHINDS I'm going to be the next star. 🌟⭐🌟 #cmhs
— Audd. ♥ (@AudraBetz) February 18, 2014

Kristin Melton, FoM Team

Project Connect Social Marketing Coordinator

Healthy Relationships & Social Media

A great turn out of students continues at Carrier Mills - Stonefort High School! Our goal today was to introduce our new Friend of MHINDS blog and to get students use to navigating through it to find what they need. CMSHS is always lively with social media -- even from their first meeting -- and we love their use of the Twitter platform.

Down to the real business of mental health information, we continued our theme of healthy relationships, encouraging them to take a look at the online resources available and discussing why it may be important to have this information at their fingertips.

Our FoM SM STAR award this month went to Kyli Grathlier! Follow her on Twitter @kyliJayeHoran and on Instagram @kayjaye_08

Kristin Melton, FoM Team
Project Connect Social Marketing Coordinator

#CMSHS First FoM Meeting

After a two month wait, we finally got the chance to have a meeting with our #CMSHS friends! Our first scheduled meeting in December was postponed due to snowy weather, so the FoM Team was excited to finally get to work with these students!

We chose to bring a #TacoBell lunch and the food line was quite long! But once the food was distributed, close to 40 students were ready to get to work learning more about what being in FoM means. We emphasized  our main goals are awareness, education, and stigma reduction.

After talking about positive use of social
media to produce social change, we gave students our Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook addresses. Guiding them on the easiest way to get started, we suggested that they post something about currently being at the Friend of MHINDS meeting.

Our Twitter feed started exploding with new followers and tweets. (We've found that each school seems to prefer different social media platforms -- which is so cool, because that's an identifying characteristic of their particular school culture!)

When we ended the lunch meeting, our team was so energized by this group's enthusiasm! Best part is that the tweets kept coming the rest of the day and it even included a few tweets that stated -- "I should have gone to the @FriendofMHINDS meeting today. I definitely won't miss the next one."

WOW :)

Kristin Melton, FoM Team 

Project Connect Social Marketing Coordinator