Posted by eporter on May 28, 2024
Resources to Support the Mental Health of Mentees
May is National Mental Health Awareness Month, which is an important time to recognize the efforts and contributions of positive youth development organizations across the country that are making strides to advance the mental health and wellbeing of Americans. Mentoring programs and organizations consistently contribute to the wellbeing of youth by providing opportunities for young people to receive compassion and build meaningful relationships with trusted adults.
Mentoring Central creates tools to help mentoring programs support the mental health and wellbeing of young people and help matches achieve positive outcomes. Mentoring Central’s research-based mentoring trainings and resources are designed to help mentors develop stronger, longer relationships with their mentees; help mentees cope with stress; support mentees who have been impacted by substance use; help mentees feel more engaged in their communities and schools; and more.
Building Assets Together: A Guide for Youth Mentors (the BAT Guide) is a downloadable, printable guide that contains dozens of suggested activity ideas and strategies to help mentors support the well-being of their mentees. The guide uses a person-centered, asset-based approach to mentoring, so mentors can incorporate their mentees’ individual needs, background, goals, interests, and strengths when planning activities to do together. Activity suggestions and strategies are designed to support specific goals at various points in the lifecycle of the mentoring relationship. For example, the guide provides tips for how mentors can help their mentee prepare for upcoming events or holidays to decrease their stress levels. Mentors also learn how to support their mentee in school and their interests, help mentees practice making healthy decisions, increase their mentees’ civic engagement, and help mentees build positive peer friendships. Each of these strategies can directly or indirectly positively impact mentees’ mental and behavioral health.
Substance of Change: Building Assets in Mentees Affected by Substance Misuse is a web-based training course designed to help mentors learn actionable strategies to support a mentee who is currently misusing substances, is in recovery for substance misuse, or is close to someone misusing substances. The course contains an engaging lesson designed to teach mentors how to help their mentees cope with stress in healthy ways. By learning strategies to cope with stress and support their mental health, at-risk mentees may be more likely to make healthier decisions and experience positive behavioral outcomes.
Building the Foundation for STEM Mentors is another interactive, web-based training course that teaches mentors strategies to support the mental health of special populations of youth. Subpopulations of youth who are traditionally underrepresented in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) often face unique challenges when exploring their interests in STEM. Women, immigrants and refugees, people with a disability, people from an ethnic or racial minority group, and first-generation college students are more likely to experience microaggressions and discrimination when pursuing higher education or a career in STEM, which can lead young people to feel isolated or dissuade them from pursuing a future in STEM. Building the Foundation for STEM Mentors teaches mentors involved in STEM mentoring programs ways to support a mentee who is underrepresented in STEM and/or is experiencing microaggressions. These strategies may help mentors mitigate the negative effects that microaggressions can have on mentees’ mental health, confidence in their STEM-related abilities, and plans to pursue a future in STEM.
To learn more about Mentoring Central’s research-based training courses and resources designed to support the mental and behavioral health of mentees, visit https://mentoringcentral.net/mentoring-training/.