3 minute read
The Resilience Project
Greater Gallatin United Way offers free mental health workshops
Suicide rates have increased by 30% in the United States since 1998, according to the CDC—and Montana consistently has the highest rates across the nation. While mental health advocacy and awareness have been gaining popularity in American culture, the stigmatization of mental health continues to make people feel alone in their behavioral health struggles.
Greater Gallatin United Way has been offering free mental health workshops and trainings since 2016. Through a program called The Resilience Project, the organization is aiming to normalize conversations about mental health and, especially after COVID-19, offer the idea that sometimes there is no way around feeling bad and it’s not your fault.
Using questions from experts in the field of early childhood adversity, Ellie Martin, Behavioral Health Consultant for The Resilience Project said, “I wanted to shift the conversation from, ‘What’s wrong with people?’ to ‘What happened to people?’ and how can we help them move forward.”
This mentality laid the groundwork for one of the workshops that Greater Gallatin United Way offers on a quarterly schedule. The workshop, called Toxic Stress and Resiliency, uses framework from the ACEs study (adverse childhood experiences) whose research proves that childhood trauma can have major effects later in life on an adult’s physical health, as well as how they process and cope with stress. Martin uses this scientific evidence to bolster her workshops, providing participants with realistic and effective mechanisms for coping and dealing with everyday stress.
“I want to normalize that feeling better might not always be possible, but feeling less-bad could be,” Martin said.
Tori Sproles, Executive Director at Child Care Connections, has attended multiple workplace trainings hosted by The Resilience Project.
“It brings you to a place where it feels OK to be vulnerable and work through things,” she said. “It’s a reminder of all the things that can be done to reinforce self-care.”
These workshops and trainings are designed to be accessible, easy and informative. To provide helpful information to everyone who attends, the workshops remain broad in their scope and provide skills that have proven helpful to a wide array of individuals. However, the experience is not personalized and everyone’s relationship with mental health is unique.
