At Muskingum Behavioral Health, we advocate for eliminating stigma and promoting understanding through Community Relations and Prevention programs. We believe community engagement and education are essential for lasting impact. By partnering with local schools, government agencies, businesses, and healthcare providers, we create a network of support that encourages healthy communities. Through our educational workshops, community events, and public awareness campaigns, we work to ensure our community feels empowered.
Prevention Services for a Lifespan
We understand that Prevention isn't a one-time strategy but rather for a lifetime. From early childhood to older adulthood, our evidenced-based prevention services and community education programs are designed to address each stage of life, offering tools and resources to promote mental health, emotional resilience, and healthy coping skills.
Early Childhood and Youth Programs
Starting early is key to building a strong foundation. Our programs for young children and adolescents focus on teaching emotional regulation, resilience, and problem-solving skills to reduce the risk of future mental health and substance use issues. We offer:
In-School Programs - Education workshops in local schools covering mental health, emotional well-being, and drug prevention with age-appropriate content and even characters.
- Too Good for Drugs Too Good for Violence - Too Good is a comprehensive family of evidenced based substance use and violence prevention interventions designed to mitigate the risk factors linked to problem behaviors and build protection within the child to resist problem behaviors. Too Good develops and reinforces a comprehensive skills framework including setting reachable goals, making responsible decisions, identifying and managing emotions, and effective communication in addition to peer-pressure refusal, pro-social peer bonding, and peaceful conflict resolution skills.
- Catch my BREATHE(vaping) - This peer-led teaching approach empowers students with knowledge and skills needed to make informed decisions about e-cigarettes and resist social pressures to vape. This is the only school-based vaping prevention program proven to reduce the likelihood of vaping among youth. It was developed by tobacco youth prevention researchers and practitioners, a youth advisory board, and years of real-world implementation.
- Healthy Alternatives for Little Ones (HALO) - HALOis a 12-unit holistic health and substance use prevention curriculum for children ages 3-6 in child care settings. HALO is designed to address risk and protective factors for substance use and other health behaviors by providing children with information on healthy choices. This program aims to help children understand the complexities of "health" and "healthy choices" by putting these abstract concepts into concrete terms they can understand. In HALO, health is defined as "growing bigger, stronger, and better able to think." The curriculum encourages healthy eating, exercise, and emotion recognition and educates children about the harmful effects of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (ATOD) on the body. HALO provides learning opportunities for children through teacher- led, developmentally appropriate, and fun hands-on activities that involve educational songs, videos, group activities, and books. Parental involvement is facilitated through introductory and unit-specific letters that encourage at-home discussion and the practice of identifying and making healthy choices.
Young Adult Outreach
For young and collage-aged adults, a critical transition period, we offer:
- Finding the Gold Within - This program is a guide to nurturing your inner capacity for resiliency so you can quickly and gracefully recover from life's adversities.
Adversity is common. Many of us have had Adverse Childhood Experiences, known as ACES. These experiences can have lifelong impacts on our health, relationships, and emotional well-being. "Healing" trauma is not about rectifying the past as it is about not letting the past control your current life.
Resiliency doesn't stop developing once you grow up. It is nurtured by family and friends. It is facilitated through helping relationships, and supported by schools, institutions, and community. People thrive when they successfully work through adversity and feel supported in positive relationships while dealing with life's challenges.
Finding the Gold Within will help you strengthen these qualities so you can bounce back from difficulties, and find meaning and joy in your life.
- Parenting Classes
Love and Logic - The Love and Logic Institute is dedicated to making parenting and teaching fun and rewarding, instead of stressful and chaotic. We provide practtical tools and techniques that help adults achieve respectful, healthy relationships with their children. All of our work is based on a physchological sound parenting and teaching, whole-child philosophy called Love and Logic.
What Is Love and Logic? Children learn the best lessons when they're given a task and allowed to make their own choices (and fail) when the cost of failure is still small. Children's failures must be coupled with love and empathy from their parents and teachers. This practical, research-based philosophy is backed with 47 years of experience. Parents can apply it immediately to a wide range of situations instead of struggling with difficult counseling procedures.
Adult Wellness
Mental health and substance use issues impact many working adults. We offer:
- Finding the Gold Within
- Parenting Classes - Guidance and resources for adults managing family.
- Love and Logic
- Active Teens - Active Parenting of Teens
For parents of preteens and teens, this video and discussion program provides parents with the skills needed to use effective discipline, teach responsibility, and communicate with their children. Each session shows parents how to handle sensitive issues such as drugs, sexuality, and violence.
Senior Services
In later life, mental health needs can become complex, and we offer dedicated programs for older adults to promote well-being and social connection.
- Wellness Initiatives for Senior Education (WISE) - This program empowers older adults to advocate for their own health, make healthy lifestyle choices, and navigate use of medications and substances like alcohol. WISE is a national program and has been presented in many states across the country since 1996. Find out how WISE helps older adults improve the psychological well-being, knowledge, and attitudes about aging, including the knowledge of the early signs and symptoms of depression.
Get Involved with MBH Community Relations & Prevention
Whether you’re an individual looking to learn more, a community organization seeking a partnership, or a school interested in prevention programming, MBH is here to support you. Reach out today to find out how to work together to create a healthier, more connected community.
