636 - RAP Club: A Mental Health Program that Brings Coping Skills and Mindfulness to Schools
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 14 July 2023
⏱️ 15 minutes
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Summary
Many lifetime mental health issues emerge during adolescence, but equipping youths with strategies and skills to work through trauma, anxiety, and depression can be key to preventing problems from snowballing. Johns Hopkins Center for Adolescent Health director Dr. Tamar Mendelson talks with Stephanie Desmon about working with Baltimore City schools to develop a successful program called RAP Club (Relax, Aware, Personal rating) to teach youths mindfulness and other strategies to combat the impacts of stress and trauma. Read more here: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2023/rap-club-promoting-adolescent-mental-health-in-schools
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu. |
| 0:23.8 | That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes. |
| 0:31.9 | This is Lindsay Smith-Rogers. Mental health among adolescents is a huge concern even before the added stressors of the |
| 0:38.9 | pandemic piled on. Today, Stephanie Desmond talks to Dr. Tamar Mendelson, director of the Johns |
| 0:45.4 | Hopkins Center for Adolescent Health, about a program she is refining that brings mental health |
| 0:50.6 | prevention services directly to teens where they are in the schools. Let's listen. |
| 0:57.2 | Tamara Mendelsohn, thanks so much for joining me. Hi, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be with you. |
| 1:03.1 | Thank you. I'm so glad you're here because I want to talk to you about something that's really important |
| 1:07.1 | and that is anxiety and depression among teenagers. I know a lot of people say that it |
| 1:13.7 | can be blamed on the pandemic, but that's not what your research is shown. No, in fact, |
| 1:19.3 | we've seen increases in depression and anxiety among teens and children pretty much since 2011. there's been an increase. And I think it took |
| 1:31.4 | the pandemic for people to really stop and appreciate that this really is a serious problem. |
| 1:37.7 | Of course, during the pandemic, we also saw an additional bump up in these kinds of mental health |
| 1:43.2 | issues. Could you quantify for us a little bit |
| 1:46.0 | this mental health issue among teens? Yeah, absolutely. So about one in six young people in the United |
| 1:54.1 | States, ages six to 17, experience a mental health disorder each year. And 50% of all lifetime mental illness actually |
| 2:04.3 | begins by age 14, with 75% occurring by age 24. So actually, the adolescence is a time period |
| 2:14.3 | when a lot of these mental health issues are emerging and it's really important |
| 2:19.0 | for us to be aware of that and to actually try to prevent mental health problems from happening |
| 2:25.2 | in the first place. So one solution that you've had is to bring mental health to the schools, |
... |
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