BYTE’s Healthy Minds Workshop: An Alternative and Proactive Approach

With the current crisis in Attawapiskat bringing to light the challenges youth face in remote communities, the need to address how youth deal with stress and overcome the challenges they face is ever present in our minds.

While it is important that the government is reacting and sending help and resources to this community in need, reactive solutions can come too late and may be ineffective to many issues youth must face. Research is showing that proactive general character development in youth is as effective as specific behaviour programs, and has the added benefit of being effective at working toward multiple positive outcomes at the same time. Additionally, proactive positive behaviour development is significantly more effective than reactive interventions once negative behaviours materialize.

That is why the new Healthy Minds workshop at BYTE may one of the most effective workshops communities can use in building up youth and giving them universal tools to address a wide array of challenges they face.

“Mindfulness.” “Talking.” “Having fun.” “Being positive.” “Gratefulness.” “Meditation.” “To calm down.” “How to relax.” “Drawings of where to go when you are stressed.” These are the things that youth felt they learned and valued from participating in the Healthy Minds workshops over the last year.

BYTE introduced the Healthy Minds workshop in early 2015 as a pilot program with money from the Yukon Health Investment Fund to offer an alternative approach to help youth build the skills needed to deal with the challenges of everyday life. This workshop aims at providing a fun experience that builds on positive mental models, strategies for reducing stress, relaxing techniques, and tools to promote a positive state of mind.

There are many workshops and interventions out there that take reactive approaches to negative behaviours like bullying, or might take proactive approaches, but according to Natalie Sands, one of the facilitators of BYTE’s workshops in 2015/16, youth tend to avoid attending some workshops to steer clear of negative emotions and triggers when talking about specific behaviours.

Sands says that the Healthy Minds workshop takes a fun, open approach that gives youth the spotlight and the steering wheel, and avoids the model of youth listening to an adult telling them how they should behave. The workshop steers away from direct problem-solving strategies for specific behaviours and works to share practical tools that youth can use to relax, recognizing and calming themselves in times of stress, and promoting positive emotions to replace negative emotions. All of these skills lead to lifestyles that help reduce the need to resort to negative behaviours.

In the research study, “Character Education, Prevention, and Positive Youth Development,” Victor Battistich argues that when communities are focused on “promoting the positive development of young people, not just academically but also emotionally, ethically, and socially[,] they may not only promote students’ overall positive development as individuals and citizens, but also effectively prevent the occurrence of a wide range of current social problems among our youth.” (p. 9)

Battistich’s study goes on to suggest that programs that work to address overarching positive character development could be a more cost-effective solution to addressing behaviours than to conduct many specific programs designed to address a single issue.

Furthermore, the emphasis of studies on proactive positive character development programs is that developing the skills needed to have a positive mental attitude, know how to deal with stress, and how to maintain positive relationship with oneself and those around you, are significantly more effective when developed in youth early on before they become engulfed in a cyclical system of negative reactions to negative behaviours.

But how is it working here, in the Yukon, in the communities? Fran Etzel, Principal of Ross River School, can attest to the power of the program for her students. “Students were able to think about places that relieves stress and many related this to their traditional camp site or cultural activity,” Etzel says.

Etzel has been a champion of positive development of youth in her community. She has worked with BYTE and the Youth Investment Fund to fund two Healthy Minds workshops in her community. “Funding is an issue,” Etzel confides, and while BYTE has core funding, workshops have a fee and communities must find the resources to cover them. The Yukon Government’s Youth Directorate has funding available for community youth programs and encourages communities to apply.

Etzel states, “I think this approach helps our students to build on a positive mind state so they can address other issues in their lives. This allows kids to be ready for something when it comes their way.  The BYTE workshops are helping kids in Ross to take more risks and to be more mindful.” 

Since early 2015, BYTE has conducted 10 Healthy Minds workshops in 7 Yukon communities. To get more information about the bringing the Healthy Minds workshop to your community, or other workshops and trainings that BYTE offers, contact BYTE at info@yukonyouth.com.

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Sources:

¹ – Battistich, V., Schaps, E., Watson, M., Solomon, D., & Lewis, C. (2000). Effects of the Child Development Project on students’ drug use and other problem behaviors. Journal of Primary Prevention, 21, 75-99;

² – Battistich, V. (2011). Character Education, Prevention, and Positive Youth Development. University of Missouri, St. Louis.

³Â - Fran Etzel, March 30-31 (2016). Personal Communications.