What's up, everybody? This is Paula Phelps, and you are listening to on a positive note,

where I sit down with a songwriter, recording artist, or music insider to learn how music can lift our spirits and heal our hearts.

Today, we're talking with Dr. Regina Miranda about the Sounded Out campaign, which uses the power of music to help parents and caregivers support emotional wellness in young people.

This remarkable program uses songs and lyrics to help kids open up about their feelings, as well as giving them tools for handling difficult emotions.

Regina, a professor of psychology at Hunter College,

is one of the advisors for the program, and she's here to tell us more. Well, Regina, thank you for being

our guest on a positive note. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. You are part of

something that is so fascinating. When I found out about this campaign, I just immediately

had to dig in and learn more. And Sounded Out campaign uses music as that entry point for

talking about emotions. Can you tell us how that program works? Yeah. So we know that mental

health problems have been increasing in the U.S. and including among children.

And some kids and families tend to have less access, particularly youth of color, to mental health treatment or mental health care, health care in general.

And so Sounded Out is a program that uses music to help parents and caregivers

have conversations with their kids about mental health and emotional well-being with a specific

focus on middle schoolers and use of color, but really it's meant to be broader for all middle

schoolers. But it targets the audience of middle schoolers. How did this program come about?

Do you know how it was developed?

And then can you tell us how you became involved in it?

So it's a partnership between the Ad Council and Pivotal Ventures.

And the way that I became involved, actually I was referred by a colleague, Dr. Alfie

Real and Noble of the Acoma Project.

And so she got me hooked up with the Ad Council

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