Mental Health Literacy for Students and Educators: The Mental Health & High School Curriculum Guide

I acknowledge the amazing work of Dr. Kutcher and the amazing things Teen Mental Health has done. What I can't understand is how little has changed, and how we're considering this to be innovation. This document is basically the same thing as TAMI - Talking About Mental Illness published in 2002! https://www.camh.ca/en/education/Documents/www.camh.net/education/Resources_teachers_schools/TAMI/tami_teachersall.pdf Not much has changed in youth mental health education other than increased awareness. I definitely acknowledge that progress has been made in some areas, but in terms of giving people opportunities to engage in meaningful learning from people who can guide them, we've hardly made any progress. I don't see how this curriculum guide varies much in its essence from the 2002 document. The other problem that made the 2002 document sit in storage is that no one in their right mind, teachers especially has time to sift through this, let alone teach it. I know there are a few superhero teachers that go above and beyond, but for the most part, these documents don't do much other than getting circulated, celebrated, and discussed as great tools. Know I'm not trying to criticize and be rude, but no one calls this stuff out and it just perpetuates the lack of meaningful engagement for youth and those they can learn from. I'd assume that in 10-15 years these documents will have just as much dust on them if things don't change. I'd love to get some of the work we're doing up on this site, but as of now, I'm for the most part a one-man show. My organization formed a partnership with the Toronto District School Board and the Catholic board this year and we're trying to roll out what we believe to be much more practical and effective ways of engaging young people in this topic. There's some information here - startswithme.ca/som or startswithme.ca/schools I hope these words come across sincerely, and I hope to get the chance to contribute in meaningful ways as we gain resources and opportunities to work on it. sincerely mike stroh

Dear Mike, thank you for your note and obvious passion in this area. We appreciate your support of our work and as we move forward it is essential for us to ensure that all people with your interests are fully informed about our innovations. The link that you provided to an Ontario document on stigma is not the same as our work in mental health literacy (MHL). We have addressed MHL as comprised of 4 distinct but related domains: obtaining and maintaining good mental health; understanding mental disorders and their treatments, decreasing stigma and enhancing help seeking efficacy. We have done this in a unique manner - embedding a curriculum resource that can successfully and sustainably improve outcomes for students and also for teachers. In addition, this innovation builds MHL capacity within the education system and does so in a frugal and sustainable way. As we understand that you are also interested in these outcomes, we trust that you will be pleased that our approach has been so successful. In addition, at the systems level, we have formed partnerships with school districts, institutions of higher learning, not-for-profits and government ministries globally to ensure that the resource is being applied at the appropriate level to meet curriculum outcomes. This builds on and enhances existing identified mental health goals. The resource was developed to be flexible and frugally implemented. This is also unique as it does not rely on fidelity of delivery, but rather on existing pedagogical processes. That is why the outcomes are so similar regardless if the intervention is applied in high or low resourced and socio-culturally diverse jurisdictions. We encourage local adaptation of the materials so that the resource can better reflect the community in which it is being applied. We also seek ongoing feedback on the resource and are responsive to the feedback we receive. For example, this resource has undergone a number of updates. The most recent update included detailed feedback not only from Canadian educators but also from key stakeholders globally. We are sure that you also support how important ongoing up-to date and easily accessible professional development is for educators, and how important this is for application to students and maintenance of effective sustainable impact. We utilize a “waterfall” model of development of training teams that has been shown to be an effective approach, not only in Canada but in other countries as well. However, we are always trying to improve access for educators to this evidence-based material and in particular we are trying to improve access for educators in rural and remote areas. Therefore, recently we partnered with the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia, to create and apply yet another innovative component to this. Just a few weeks ago, an online course was launched through the University of British Columbia for educators to undertake comprehensive self–directed learning on the resource and increase their mental health literacy in the comfort of their own homes! Here is the link: http://pdce.educ.ubc.ca/mentalhealth/. To our knowledge, this is the first globally available, evidence based, online MHL professional learning intervention for educators. This innovation will be easily accessed across Canada and globally. The research and evaluation evidence collected to date (in Canada and elsewhere) demonstrates that this intervention has substantial, significant and sustained positive impact on numerous mental health related outcomes for both students and teachers. Some of the articles on these impacts are listed under the Resources tab on the MHIN page. If it would be helpful we can send you other articles and share more detail on how different provinces and countries are succeeding at sustained implementation of school based mental health literacy. For first hand impact on student’s lives check out this news piece from North Vancouver on implementing the resource in the classroom. https://globalnews.ca/news/3876529/north-vancouver-mental-health-course/.