A group of 15 Jasper teens have completed the two-day Community Helpers Training run by Jasper Community Outreach Services.
The Community Helpers program is part of a province-wide initiative to combat youth suicide rates. Research shows that only a small percentage of teens and young adults seek help from professionals when it comes to their mental health; 44 per cent don’t seek help from anyone at all, whereas 55 per cent of youth and young adults seek out help from their friends and peers.
Based on this research, Alberta Health Services has been sponsoring Community Helpers Training throughout the province. The intent of the program is to build a bridge between the informal and formal supports for youth in the community and to provide awareness of existing resources in community.
The program is designed to help teens to properly refer peers to professional resources.
During the training, Jasper’s teens heard that mental health can affect your day-to-day life the same way an earache can, yet it’s handled quite differently. If you were to have an earache, you would call in sick from school or your job and seek professional help from a doctor. In comparison, if you suffer from depression you would likely be more hesitant to call your boss saying you weren’t coming into work and less likely to seek professional help.
Mental illness is no different from a physical illness, you are still not well. Unfortunately, the stigma surrounding mental illnesses is common.
In his TED Talk, Kevin Breel breaks that stigma down, saying “If you break your arm, everyone runs over to sign your cast, but if you tell people you’re depressed, everyone runs the other way.
“Real depression isn’t being sad when something in your life goes wrong. Real depression is being sad when everything in your life is going right,” explained Breel.
Mental health awareness has become a very large concern and is becoming a very well-known issue around the world.
With this program, 15 students from Jasper are now properly trained to help a friend or peer who may be struggling with mental health. They are now educated on how to approach a peer who may be going through a rough time using the following steps: state your concern, identify the problem, explore the options, talk about the consequences with each option, find out what they are going to do, and express support.
During the second day of training, the group toured around town, meeting the people on the front lines of Jasper’s professional resources and seeing where they worked. Some of those formal supports were HIV West Yellowhead, the sexual health nurse, and the mental health therapist.
Physically walking to these offices was especially helpful for teens because it can be scary to go seek out formal support, especially when you’re not sure exactly where to find them in the community.
As trained community helpers, these teens will now feel comfortable to walk a peer to a formal resource.
The teens ended the two-day training program with a 15-minute meditation session, based around the importance of self care, because helping people can from time-to-time put a large strain on yourself. The students’ feedback on the meditation was very positive.
One said, “It felt really good to just clear my mind. I’ve been stressed about school and things my friends have come to me with, it was just really nice to let those things go.”
And another commented, “As teenagers, we tend to get stressed like anyone else, we just feel like when you’re helping other people, we don’t want to worry them with our issues. Sometimes we feel like we don’t have somewhere to go, now being able to help others and know our limits, I think it will help ourselves in the long run.”
If you’re a teen interested in taking the Community Helpers Training program, please contact Anna DeClercq at 780-852-6543.
Gabrielle Guigard
Student reporter
