Helping Parents and Kids Talk About Mental Health

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Tom Haederle

Despite the fact that half of all mental health issues begin before age 14, most parents don't talk to their kids about this growing public health issue. It isn't easy, and many well-intentioned parents don't quite know how to do it or where to start. As we observe May as Mental Health Awareness Month, and this week as Children's Mental Health Week, Florida-based AdventHealth for Children has created a suite of tools and resources to help parents and their kids open the door to these difficult but necessary conversations.

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Tom Haederle

Welcome to Advancing Health, a podcast from the American Hospital Association. I'm Tom Haederle with AHA Communications. During and since the pandemic, AdventHealth for Children has noted an alarming rise in the number of children coming into the E.R. with mental health issues. In response, it has created "Be a Mindleader," a preventive campaign targeted to parents who have kids ages 8 to 12.

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Tom Haederle

The goal of the Be a Mindleader campaign is to get curated, expert information into the hands of kids, parents, caregivers, coaches, mentors, and teachers and help facilitate life changing conversations about mental health issues between children, teens and the adults in their lives. In this podcast hosted by Jordan Steiger, senior program manager of Clinical Affairs and Workforce with AHA; she is joined by two experts to explore how the Be a Mindleader

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Tom Haederle

campaign is leading the way to improving adolescent mental health. Jaeann Ashton is marketing director for Women's and Children's with AdventHealth. And Jessica Galo is director of Specialty Care with AdventHealth for Children.

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Jordan Steiger

Jaeann and Jessica, thank you so much for joining us today at the AHA to tell us more about your work at AdventHealth for Children. We know that it is Mental Health Month, and we also know that is Children's Mental Health Week. So we'd really like to shed some light on the great work that our members are doing around helping kids and their families, you know, be the mentally healthiest that they can be.

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Jordan Steiger

So thank you for being here.

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Jaeann Ashton

Thank you so much for being here.

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Jordan Steiger

So as we get started, tell our listeners a little bit more about AdventHealth for children and the community that you serve.

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Jessica Galo

years, since: 1908

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Jessica Galo

We are a faith-based, not-for-profit with a mission to extend the healing ministry of Christ and deliver whole person care. And we serve a very diverse community here in Central Florida with lots of families that have young children. Our children's hospital is a nationally recognized children's hospital, and has a network of pediatric care facilities. And we have over 250 pediatricians and specialists throughout central Florida.

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Jordan Steiger

Wow, Jessica. Thank you. I'm sure a lot of our members can, you know, hear parts of themselves in their own systems, in hospitals in the description that you just gave. So I think that really sets the stage nicely for the work that you're doing. So, Jaeann, you know, we know that at AdventHealth, you've been really focused on developing new programs and ways to connect with the community around the mental health of the children that you serve.

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Jordan Steiger

So what inspired you to implement this new program that you have called Be a Mindleader?

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Jaeann Ashton

Well, we were seeing an alarming number of kids and teens coming to our E.R. with mental health issues. We were seeing anxiety, depression, self-harm, suicidal ideation, and we knew we need to do something about it, like Jessica just mentioned. We are all about whole person care. And that includes not just your physical health, but your mental health as well.

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Jaeann Ashton

We know that half of all mental health illnesses begin before the age of 14. And so this campaign is really targeted to parents who have kids ages 8 to 12. We're trying to be preventative. We're trying to stop the problem before it happens. And we know that most parents don't talk to their kids about mental health. I grew up not talking with my parents about mental health.

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Jaeann Ashton

So as a parent now, it's not something that I'm really well equipped to do. And so these resources and tools are meant to help those parents have those conversations so that the epidemic doesn't continue.

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Jordan Steiger

I think you bring up a really good point that, there's been some cultural shifts in the way we talk about mental health. And, you know, even from when I was, a child, we didn't talk about mental health in the same way as kids want to do now and are more open to doing now. So I think it's great that you're kind of seeing that change and adapting to it.

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Jordan Steiger

I'm sure people are wondering, what is a mind leader and where did you come up with that phrase?

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Jaeann Ashton

Yeah, a mind leader is someone who speaks up. They talk about that they're having a bad day or that that something happened, or they just don't feel right. And they also make it safe for other people to speak up about it, too. You know, I mentioned that our target audience is that younger population. And so "MindLeader" is a play off of line leader.

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Jaeann Ashton

So, a lot of kids want to be the line leader at school, or on the playground. And so that was the initial inspiration for the word.

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Jordan Steiger

I love that. I think that is such a patient-focused way to kind of approach this and make it understandable for an 8 to 12 year old, you know, to say, I do want to be at the front of the line. I do want to be the one talking about mental health. And I just think that's so creative.

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Jordan Steiger

I know that this is an initiative that takes, you know, a lot of different people from across your hospital to make happen. So tell us a little bit about who is involved in making it work.

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Jessica Galo

We obviously have to have our clinicians involved, our experts. So we have teams of psychiatrists, psychologists, licensed social workers and nurses. We have mental health care coordinators and mental health navigators, that are all a part of the program. So really, we lean into our clinical expertise, of course. But then also what was really important was having our hospital administrators and our hospital leaders be supportive.

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Jessica Galo

And we collaborate really closely with our marketing team, our communications, social media and internal and external agencies to create the campaign. We relied on local news and radio stations who provided in-kind and pro-bono support for this initiative, and we recruited our mental health ambassadors who are community members, who have seen some of our marketing, campaign or social media posts and have actually reached out to us and said, hey, we want to be a part of this.

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Jessica Galo

And so we record those posts with them and allow them to speak their mind and speak about what inspires them to be mind leaders and encourages other people to join us as well. And then, of course, we couldn't do it without our community partners. We received some grant funding from a local charity, the Doctor Phillips Charity.

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Jessica Galo

United Way is a really big partner with us in this as well. And we have an advisory board full of our government stakeholders and our local stakeholders. Our other hospital systems in the area, who all provide input and guidance to us on what we should be doing with the campaign and our mental health programing.

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Jordan Steiger

I love what you've done with this program because it's not just a hospital program. I mean, obviously your clinicians and administrators and leaders have a huge role in this, but you've really taken, I think, the best from your community and come together and said, this is a problem that we need to all work together to solve. So I think that other, you know, hospital leaders listening to this can maybe get some inspiration from you about how to work with others in their community.

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Jordan Steiger

That's really, really great to hear. One thing though, we know about, you know, talking about mental health, that there's a lot of stigma sometimes. We talked about that a little bit already, just with families maybe not knowing how to start those conversations. How do you think this initiative has helped make those conversations a little easier?

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Jaeann Ashton

Well, we've had a tremendous response since launching a year ago. We have had people reach out to us via social media. We've had employees reach out to us when they've seen us. Parents as well as kids saying, oh my gosh, I love what you're doing. I want to be a part of it. And so Jessica mentioned our ambassadors earlier.

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Jaeann Ashton

Those have all been grown organically by kiddos or their parents reaching out to us and saying, I struggled with this and I want to help other people. So we know just from that that it's resonating. But we actually just conducted a research study. Since we're at our one year, we wanted to see how the launch went and what the data showed was that people were more likely to start conversations with their children and with their families about mental health after seeing the message, after reading about it, hearing about it, following us on social.

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Jaeann Ashton

So we know that it's working. This is a long term effort. This is not a short term effort, right? We know that this isn't all going to be fixed overnight. So we're in this for the long haul. Our partners are in this for the long haul which we're really excited about. We're also seeing patients to our practice.

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Jaeann Ashton

You know the campaign is not really meant to drive volume to our practice, but we're seeing people reach out and get the help that they need if they need it. So all of those things working together just make us thrilled to know that we're moving in the right direction.

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Jordan Steiger

It really sounds like it. It sounds like you've made a lot of headway just in one year, you know, getting people into care if they need it or helping people avoid care if they don't, you know? So I think that that is just a fantastic outcome. Jessica, you mentioned working with community partners and you mentioned, like, the heart of Florida United Way and a few other people, maybe that you got some funding from for this, this project.

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Jordan Steiger

And I'm wondering how working with community partners has really helped to move this program forward.

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Jessica Galo

Yeah. So the community relationships are a key component of what we are doing. When we first started thinking about what we wanted our mental health program to look like, we took a survey and really looked into what was already existing in the community. And, you know, there were already some crisis centers and some intensive care programs that were already out there and available.

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Jessica Galo

And we realized that obviously, there's always a need for more of those programs. But you know what really aligned with our mission and our vision of providing that whole person care is really focusing on that preventative and that early intervention phasing. So that's why we work with our local school systems and our early learning centers, and why it was really important for us to get that feedback from those key stakeholders that are in kids lives.

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Jessica Galo

Also, at the same time, we were creating our programing in our campaign, the United Way and our local county had conducted a need survey to determine what the needs around mental health were. And, it was determined that reducing stigma was a very important component for our community. And that's where the United Way really, got involved.

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Jessica Galo

They partnered with us. So we launched our children's focused initiative first. But now we're working with them on the trans-creation of the stigma reduction campaign into Spanish and eventually into Haitian Creole. So they identified that those communities were underserved and there were gaps in mental health services. And, you know, since they're already a frontline partner, answering our hotline calls, the 211 and 988, and they're well respected and well known

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Jessica Galo

in our community. It just really made sense for us to work with them.

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Jordan Steiger

That makes a lot of sense. And I think, you know, bringing in the strengths of those other organizations and saying, here is an underserved population. Here's what we can do to help serve them better, I think is something so powerful. I love that you're turning your content into different languages that represent the people in your community. So I think that's really cool to hear.

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Jordan Steiger

I'm wondering, I know, Jaeann, you talked a little bit about some of the positive outcomes that you've seen from surveys and, you know, your data and everything from the first year, but do you have maybe a positive patient or family story that you could share with us, or any other kind of things that demonstrate how positive this has been for the community?

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Jaeann Ashton

We have lots of stories. We have had parents who struggled to know what to do for their child. They knew something was wrong, but they didn't know what. And they found us. And they found our physicians and our therapists and were able to turn the situation around. One girl that I'm thinking of, I mean, she was sleeping over 14 hours a day.

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Jaeann Ashton

She wasn't eating, and she didn't know what was wrong. There wasn't something physically wrong, but there was obviously something mentally wrong. And so her mom was just...was struggling to know how to help her. And the transformation that she has had, it's truly life changing. She's in a completely different space now. She's back at school and she's thriving.

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Jaeann Ashton

And so those stories just, like, warm your heart. But we've heard that in lots of different scenarios, in lots of different ways. And not everybody needs clinical care. Sometimes it's just they need to talk to somebody, or they just they just need to be heard. And so there's sometimes extremes where there is that clinical care needed, but not always.

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Jaeann Ashton

And that's the beauty of this program is that there are lots of different options and different ways for people to get help if they even need help. Sometimes it's just as simple as having a conversation.

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Jordan Steiger

Exactly. And I think that's why this program is so powerful, because it really reaches every child in whatever phase they're in, kind of, with their mental health. So I think you've done some really incredible work that others can really learn from. If somebody wants to learn more about Be a Mindleader, is there a place that they can go to get more information?

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Jaeann Ashton

Absolutely. www.BeAMindleader.com is our website. As Jessica mentioned, we will have a Spanish version later this month very soon. But BeAMindleader.com has a lot of resources that are downloadable. Whether it's conversation starters, there's also blogs, there's videos. You can connect with our mental health navigator there. There is also social channels. So hashtag be a mind leader.

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Jaeann Ashton

And we have Facebook, YouTube and Instagram where we're posting content daily.

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Jordan Steiger

Awesome. I'm sure you will get some new visitors after listening to this podcast on your social channels and website.

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Jaeann Ashton

We welcome that and people have also reached out about how to do this. How did you partner? Where did you start? And so we're happy to help. We think that mental health is so important and not just in our community. We know it's resonating everywhere. And so we're happy to help.

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Jordan Steiger

I'm sure people will be very appreciative of that. And I'm sure you will be getting some outreach, from other members of AHA. So thank you so much to both of you for spending time with us today, sharing a little bit more about your work. And thank you for the work that you do for all of the children in your community.

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Jessica Galo

Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. And thank you for putting a spotlight on mental health and Be a Mindleader.

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Tom Haederle

Thanks for listening to Advancing Health. Please subscribe and write us five stars on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.