Resources

For additional information on mental health, you can check out these websites:

For parents:

The National Institute of Mental Health website provides information about the signs and symptoms, diagnosis and treatment for a variety of mental health issues. The agency’s goal is to improve mental health through biomedical research on mind, brain and behavior. The NIMH is part of the National Institutes of Health, the federal government’s primary agency for biomedical and behavioral research.

The National Mental Health Association (NMHA) focuses heavily on children and family issues. NMHA’s Prevention and Children’s Mental Health Services Department is actively engaged in public education promoting “children’s mental health matters” and providing a website with general tips on the best ways to build up children’s strengths, protect them from risks, and give them tools to succeed in life

KidsHealth is the largest and most-visited site on the Web providing doctor-approved health information about children from before birth through adolescence. Created by The Nemours Foundation's Center for Children's Health Media, the award-winning KidsHealth provides families with accurate, up-to-date, and jargon-free health information.

FamilyLTC.net provides busy, caring adults with a means to encourage learning and enrich relationships with their children. Through this site, Family LTC aspires to: promote and foster interactive learning experiences, enhance and strengthen family connections and build core values that are essential for success in life. Here you can find parenting tips, articles on child development and hundreds of new age-appropriate child activities each month.

TheAntiDrug.com was created by the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign to equip parents and other adult caregivers with the tools they need to raise drug-free kids. Working with the nation's leading experts in the fields of parenting and substance abuse prevention, TheAntiDrug.com serves as a drug prevention information center, and a supportive community for parents to interact and learn from each other.

For youth:

Mpower is a new youth awareness campaign that's harnessing the power of music to change youth attitudes about mental health and fight the stigma facing the 1 in 5 youth with mental health problems. It focuses on a wide range of mental health issues, including depression, substance abuse, anxiety, eating disorders and suicide, and provides important resources and information to encourage those in need to seek help.

BAM! Body and Mind is an online destination for kids created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Designed for kids 9-13 years old, BAM! Body and Mind gives them the information they need to make healthy lifestyle choices.

The 4girls Health website was created to help girls (ages 10-16) learn about health, growing up, and issues they may face. It focuses on health topics that girls are concerned about and helps motivate them to choose healthy behaviors by using positive, supportive, and non-threatening messages. The site gives girls reliable, useful information on the health issues they will face as they become young women and tips on handling relationships with family and friends, at school and at home.

It’s My Life is a website funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that focuses on the life issues kids face. It is aimed at children ages 9-12 and includes articles, reader stories and provides a chance to play games, take quizzes and polls and watch video clips of kids discussing feelings and experiences. The site covers Friends, Family, School, Body and Emotions.

Emotional Health

Stress is not just for adults.

mother and daugher photoNor is sadness, or loneliness, or hurt or anger.

Kids have these feelings too, and they can get in the way of their happiness and their ability to learn.

Experts say that mental health can be just as important as physical health for children and adults.

There is a lot parents can do to keep problems to a minimum. According to the National Mental Health Association (NMHA), these are the basics for a child’s good mental health:

Here are some signs to look for that the NMHA says may indicate your child is having problems:

Mental health issues can interfere with a student’s readiness to learn. If you feel like your child is having problems, you can contact your school’s CHILL mental health counselor. For more information on the CHILL program, click here to download the brochure.