What does it take to build Developmental Assets in children suffering from mental illness? That is the question that licensed mental health therapist Jim Still-Pepper has set out to answer with a set of trainings focused on mental illness and the assets.
Developed with Ohio’s Care Team Collaborative, Mental Health ABCs and Normal or Not? are two professional development trainings that focus on teaching teachers, youth workers, and other adults how to build assets in children with mental illnesses.
See the Care Team’s other trainings
Mental Health ABCs, which also goes by the name Alphabet Soup, is a training that focuses on explaining common mental health diagnoses and directing participants to positive, strengths-based strategies that educators and youth-serving professionals can use to support children with mental illnesses. The training is often tailored to the specific needs of the participants, whether they are interested in learning more about ADHD, depression, or another specific diagnosis.
After looking at symptom checklists for each diagnosis, participants gain an understanding of what mental health professionals consider to be symptoms and they reflect on what those symptoms mean in terms of building assets in kids with mental health issues.
The focus of the Mental Health ABCs training is on what school and youth-serving personnel need to do to help students and their families who are struggling with mental illness. As Still-Pepper explains, “It’s more than just ‘here’s what’s wrong and make a referral,’ but what they can do besides that to help bring about stability.”
Visit UCLA’s Center for Mental Health in Schools
The training is mainly attended by Care Team Collaborative professionals, school personnel, and Big Brothers, Big Sisters members, but also has been extremely beneficial to foster and adoptive parents.
Offered to a wider audience, including parents, school personnel, and agency personnel, Normal or Not? teaches participants strengths-based ways to help children with mental illnesses. The training discusses the important distinction between “the typical teen behaviors that may be unsettling, but are not mental health issues,” and “the types of behaviors that could be mental health issues,” says Still-Pepper.
Participants learn the characteristics of typical developmental stages and some milestones associated with those stages. Often children who have a low number of Developmental Assets do not have the same developmental and chronological ages, and this may have an effect on how adults choose appropriate interventions. For example, a 16-year-old with a developmental age of 12 may not respond positively to interventions designed for her or his chronological age; therefore, being able to identify a child’s developmental age is crucial to being able to choose the proper intervention.
During the training, participants think about one child in their life, whether it is their own child or a child they work with, and, by the end of the training, are able to identify that child’s developmental age. They also learn to assess what that child needs to develop at her or his current developmental age. In addition to these skills, participants learn about the types of professionals that parents may contact or school personnel may refer students to if they suspect a child has a mental illness.
Still-Pepper’s trainings are bringing the message of the Developmental Assets to the mental health field across Ohio. Mental Health ABCs and Normal or Not? are changing how many people view children’s mental health issues, and are shaping intervention strategies of youth-serving professionals and parents around the state.
For more information, contact Jim Still-Pepper at 740-588-6227 or stilllight@columbus.rr.com.
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