EveryDay Strong: 5 Mental Health Resources for Children
When your child is facing some kind of behavior difficulty or crisis, one of the hardest things is knowing where you can go to get help. Sometimes you also need help knowing what kinds of activities can you do at home to strengthen your child’s resilience while you’re waiting to get into therapy, or as extra support for therapeutic help.
Here are 5 resources that our panel of experts recommends as good places to start.
2–1–1
If you’re struggling to find ways to pay for therapy (or other services), 2–1–1 is a free helpline that anyone in the community can call to find out what services they might qualify for. It captures virtually every service in the state that serves low income families, so rather than call a hundred different places to find out what you might qualify for, 2–1–1 can be a one-stop-shop. The database includes everything from food support to group therapy to transportation.
2–1–1 also has an app and a website where you can search for resources. Ecclesiastical leaders, teachers, and anyone else can also call on behalf of someone.
211utah.org
Effective Child Therapy
If you’re wondering how to go about finding a psychologist or what red flags you should look out for when choosing a therapist, this is a great place to start. It also gives you questions you can use to get some insight on whether your child’s behavior is typical or a sign of a bigger issue and explanations of the different kinds of evidence-based therapies.
Effectivechildtherapy.org
Child Mind Institute
Like Effective Child Therapy, this is a resource-rich website designed by trained professionals. It includes a symptom checker and useful articles to help with issues like abuse, bullying, depression, shyness, parenting, special needs, and many, many more.
QPR Institute
Suicide prevention is something all of us should be trained in. QPR is three simple steps anyone can learn to help prevent suicide. It helps you know what kinds of questions you should ask and how you can be a kind listener. United Way can provide a limited number of QPR Trainings, or reach out to Hope for Utah (hope4utah.com). Training takes about 1 hour.
Qprinstitute.com
Request an EveryDay Strong speaker
A good relationship with a caring adult relationship is one of the biggest keys to a child’s resilience. United Way has teamed with child psychiatrists and public health professionals to develop an easy-to-implement framework to help you help the kids in your life more effectively. Even though you’re not a therapist there are simple actions you can take to build their resilience and show compassion and care for their struggles.
Everydaystrong.org
United Way is on a mission to help every child in our community feel safe, connected, and confident. Twice a month in this space, we’ll be sharing ideas from local professionals, parents, and friends about how you can do that for the kids in your life. In the meantime, find us on our website, or on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
