30- Day Mental Health Wellness Challenge
The 30-day Mental Health Wellness Challenge will begin on January 1, 2025 and continue until the end of January. Each day will have a quick task to do that is intended to help improve your mental wellness. Although these tasks are included in the 30-day challenge, they are a quick and easy addition to start implementing in your everyday life throughout the rest of the year! This challenge was created in partnership with Contigo Wellness and will be posted daily on both of our social media accounts. CAN’s English Instagram: @we_can_atx, CAN’s Spanish Instagram focused on wellness: @bienestarcolectiva, and Contigo Wellness’ Instagram: @contigo_wellness. If you choose to participate in the challenge, please tag us in your posts!
Language Access Project for Mental Health and Wellness
Data from our CAN Dashboard shows that the percentage of adults reporting poor mental health is at a 10-year high. The CAN Community Council has published two reports on mental health and wellness:
Community Mental Health and Wellness Report: Recommendations for Addressing Mental Health (2022)
Mental Health Report: “Everybody Has a Role” (2023)
These reports outline and assess needs/trends pertaining to mental health and wellness and make recommendation regarding the strategies and actions that our community should pursue to address this growing problem. Beginning in 2022, CAN as a whole focused on mental health, launching the Language Access Project for Mental Health and Wellness.
In 2024, CAN worked with community partners (NAMI, VACAT, and SAIVA) to develop mental wellness toolkits for the Spanish community, Vietnamese community, and Arabic community.
Spanish Mental Wellness Toolkit “Pathways to Mental Healing”
English: https://wecanatx.org/mentalhealth/
Spanish: https://wecanatx.org/sanacion/
“Mujtama” Arabic Mental Wellness Toolkit
Vietnamese Mental Wellness Toolkit
We partnered with VACAT to work with Integral Care and Austin Public Health to interpret their “Ask, Listen, Talk, Repeat” Toolkit into Vietnamese, as well as, their conversation cards. VACAT distributed these resources through their Healthy Living Program”
“Ask, Listen, Talk, Repeat” Toolkit English: https://asklistentalk.org/
“Ask, Listen, Talk, Repeat” Toolkit Vietnamese: https://asklistentalk.org/goi-chuyen-hoi-han-lang-nghe-tro-chuyen-lap-lai-trang-chinh/
CAN Extends Mental Health First Aid Challenge – October 2024
Another action CAN has taken is to advocate for expanded use of the Mental Health First Aid training model to increase our CAN members’ and community’s ability to more effectively recognize when and provide support for individuals who are demonstrating signs of worsening mental health or who are experiencing a mental health crisis.
On May 10, 2023, CAN’s board chair, City Council Member Vanessa Fuentes, Vice Chair Liz Johson of St. Edwards University and representatives from Austin Public Health and Travis County Health & Human Services Department announced a challenge that CAN’s board has agreed to undertake. specifically to facilitate a process by which CAN member organizations will collectively train 1000 staff members on Mental Health First Aid by June 1, 2024.
The goal of training 1000 individuals was reached by January 2024. The training goal has since been increased to training 3000 individuals by the end of 2025. As of the end of October 2024, close to 2000 individuals affiliated with CAN member organizations have completed the training. CAN will also work with CAN member organization to facilitate MHFA “train the trainers” opportunities so that we can increase the number of trainers of the MHFA curriculum that we have in our local community.
Please check this website for Mental Health First Aid training opportunities.
Email info@canatx.org if you are interested in being trained to be a trainer of Mental Health First Aid or if you have questions about or would like to be involved in this effort.