New Mental Health Resource for Health Care Providers and Caregivers Developed by SickKids Experts
Over the next few months, CAPHC Conversations will be featuring articles and resources from the AboutKidsHealth website. For more information on AboutKidsHealth, check out their website, or contact Sean Schurr at firstname.lastname@example.org.
This is a guest post written by Samantha Metler, Project Co-ordinator for the Mental Health Resource project at the Hospital for Sick Children (Department of Psychiatry).
SickKids has a new mental health resource for families!
Children’s mental health plays an important role in their development, education and overall health. On-line information is the most readily available resource for health-care providers and caregivers supporting a child who is facing mental health concerns. Unfortunately, evidence-based information from a credible source is not widely available.
To address this issue, experts in mental health, knowledge translation, and website design at SickKids partnered to develop a mental health webpage that provides credible, plain language content on a variety of mental health topics. Hosting information on one platform – the AboutKidsHealth website – will help families avoid the frustration of searching through potentially unreliable on-line resources for extended periods of time. For health-care providers, the webpage is an educational tool that can be shared with families seeking supplementary mental health information.
Information is currently available on children’s anxiety, suicide prevention, and eating disorders for caregivers. To read what SickKids experts want caregivers to know about these topics, visit http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/mentalhealth.
In the coming months additional topics will be added to our webpage. Some future topics include:
- bipolar disorder
- conduct disorder
- developmental trauma disorder
- mental health issues associated with neurological deficits
- and tips on how to bolster mental health (e.g., nutrition, exercise, sleep, coping strategies, screen time)
Interactive information is also being developed for youth who are interested in learning more about their own mental health.
The goal of the new SickKids Mental Health Webpage is for health-care providers to have access to a trusted SickKids mental health resource, and for families to feel hopeful and educated throughout their mental health journey.
The CAPHC team is always interested in learning more about what is happening in the paediatric health care community. If you have a program, event, website, or initiative that you would like to share with the country, email email@example.com for more information.