Community Mental Health started with a simple premise: Make available to every community member the mental health/substance abuse information they need to live a healthy, active, and long life. The focus in on:
Community Mental Health utilizes an evidence-based Integrative Approach to provide information for four of the five categories listed above. What does this mean? It means information is based beyond and across the confines of several theoretical approaches to increase the qualitative nature of the human conditions of those individuals living in rural communities.
Community Mental Health believes the most important category is EDUCATION.
Individuals need to learn as much as they need food, clothing, and shelter. Community Mental Health’s role is to fill that need for learning by creating an engaging and relevant learning experience that motivates individuals to seek opportunities to grow in the willingness to learn new knowledge and skills that will promote their mental health within the overall “whole” of their community’s mental health.
The information provided is based on the following philosophy:
- Active learning. Individuals learn best by doing. They should be treated as active participants in the learning process, providing them with skills such as critical thinking, problem-solving, and how to express themselves effectively.
- Learning is a physiological activity involving the whole body. To enhance knowledge and skills information needs to be relevant and purposeful to increase an individual’s intrinsic motivation to want to learn more.
- Repetition and structure. The organization of the information and the creation of an exciting, safe learning environment provides the opportunity for individuals to expand upon their skills. Repetition builds knowledge and skill foundation.
- Individuals need information, knowledge, and skills.
- Individuals need tools and resources. Individuals should have skills and strategies to be able to work effectively on different levels. Individuals have their own learning preferences, and Community Mental Health is only one “means to an end” to assist them in developing other learning skills.