The Alpha Achievers put a "Positive Pulse" on mental heath in 2019/2020 

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We are excited to announce the rollout of our “Positive Pulse on Mental Health Workshop Series.”  During the year 2017 all three of the suicides in Howard County Maryland were African American males, and further one of those suicides was a recently-graduated Alpha Achiever.  This alone is the inspiration behind this initiative.  Our goal is to educate our Alpha Achievers and Achiever Advisers on how to help a friend, family member or themselves should they find themselves facing a dangerous psychological emergency.   

 

We are going to accomplish our goal by way of three separate components.

 

Pt 1: March/April 2019 

We will be hosting a series of training sessions for our Alpha Achievers to receive “Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) training that will teach the Achievers how to help friends, family, and themselves in the event of a psychological emergency. Food will be provided for the Achievers at each of the training sessions. 

 

We are currently working on the locations to host the training sessions, and those dates and times will be shared in the coming days.  

 

Pt 2: March  2019

Each School will be responsible for developing a Mental Health/Suicide Prevention workshop to present to their High School classmates. The goal of this portion of the project is for the Achiever’s classmates to become familiar with identifying:

· The targeted signs of mental distress

· Associated coping skills resources available to help

· Financial resources will be provided to each chapter for food and hosting materials 

 

Pt 3: April 6, 2019

Similar to last year, we will bring the Alpha Achievers from all 12 Howard County High Schools together to plan a workshop for middle school-aged boys attending Howard County Public Schools. The goal of this workshop is to: 

 

· Help increase Howard County parent and student awareness of the signs/symptoms of anxiety and depression 

· Help encourage and normalize help-seeking behavior related to mental health

· Address social and cultural stigmas that could discourage people from getting the help they need

· Educate and empower parents to take advantage of school-based mental health services in schools where they exist.  

 

Because the Achiever chapters have already created workshops for their high school classmates, we will be asking them to combine their knowledge, in an effort to develop a presentation for middle school males. 

 

The workshop will feature a guest speaker, individual workshops for students and parents, breakfast, and lunch.  

 

Final words:

· All time the Achievers spend working on the three components of this project will count towards their 21 hours of community service. 

· We will officially kick of this initiative once we secure the locations for the QPR training sessions mentioned in pt. 1 of this message.