Healthy Minds pilot a success!

This past summer, our summer student Matt developed a brand new workshop called Healthy Minds. It was designed to help youth achieve short and long-term mental wellness in a positive, fun way. Last week, we piloted the new workshop twice at Vanier Catholic Secondary in Whitehorse and once in Carcross.

 

It’s always exciting to see a new workshop come together, and this workshop is particularly rewarding. In it, we use discussions, activities, and videos to get participants to think about what a balanced lifestyle looks like, how they can improve their mental health, and how the teenage brain differs from the adult brain.

 

 

Outreach Coordinator Natalie Sands says that Healthy Minds is now one of her favourite workshops to facilitate because it promotes positive outcomes.

 

“In a couple of hours, you can give youth tools to work on things in terms of bringing balance to their lives,” says Natalie. “Instead of focusing on what youth shouldn’t be doing, we’re focusing on something really positive—something they can do.”

 

The workshop addresses how everything from diet, exercise, and meditation can help youth cope with a broad range of challenges that they’ll face in their teenage years, such as bullying, substance use, or stress.

 

This means that the content we use for Healthy Minds can help us deliver our other workshops, like Safe Partying or Ending Bullying.

 

“Healthy Minds is a good step in terms of moving forward with developing our other workshops,” says Natalie.

 

We also received great feedback from the participants. Participants told us that they learned “how to keep a balanced lifestyle,” that “our teenage years are important,” and “to think before speaking.”

 

We hope to visit more Yukon communities soon to deliver this workshop with the help of an exciting partner. Stay tuned for details!