Hike Your Own Hike Curriculum Summary

MECHS Learning Competencies

Dr. Lovell's video 

Thru Hikers are individuals who complete a trail from beginning to end at one time, much like our journey through life. Thru Hike Seminars address the skills that everyone needs to successfully navigate life’s trail. Seminar topics focus on broad-based needs of students and are taught to saturation each month in small group settings by counselors and social workers. Thru Hike Seminars are the Tier 1 portion of the program.  For an example of Thru Hike Seminars click the link below.

Thru Hike Seminars

RidgeRunners are the people along the trail who teach you how to negotiate particularly difficult sections of the trail, how to weather storms, and how to navigate the day-to-day etiquette of the journey. RRTs are narratives written by MECHS Faculty & Staff about events in their lives and lessons learned along the way. Each RRT is accompanied by an activity that reinforces the lesson learned and helps students apply that lesson to their own lives. RRTs are chosen by students with assistance from their mentors to address deficit areas based on PACC results. The minimum number of RRTs from each competency that will be completed by a student are determined by scores from the PACC. Additional RRTs may be used with students to help them navigate issues throughout their enrollment at MECHS as needed. RidgeRunner Tales are the Tier 2, individualized portion of the program. For an example of RidgeRunner Tales and activities click the link below.

RidgeRunner Tales

Suicide Intervention- ASIST

Applied Suicide Intervention Skills Training (two day training)

• Provides a framework for conducting an intervention.

• Participants work together to learn suicide first-aid skills:

  • Identify people who have thoughts of suicide

  • Understand how beliefs and attitudes can affect suicide interventions

  • Listen to the story of a person with thoughts of suicide and recognize turning points that support life

  • Conduct a safety assessment, develop a safe plan, and confirm the safety actions.

SAFETALK

Suicide Awareness for Everyone: Tell, Ask, Listen, KeepSafe (4 hour training)

• Provides a framework for helping and connecting people with thoughts of suicide.

• Participants learn about suicide alertness by

  • Moving beyond common tendencies to miss, dismiss, or avoid suicide

  • Recognizing people who have thoughts of suicide

  • Applying the TALK steps to connect a person with thoughts of suicide to a suicide first-aid intervention caregiver

• All MECHS staff in are trained in safeTALK

Youth Mental Health First Aid

Eight-hour training designed for adults who have regular contact with adolescents

• Teaches how to identify risk factors & warning signs of MH problems in adolescents

• Builds understanding of the need for intervention

• Teaches individuals how to help adolescents in crisis or experiencing a MH challenge

BASE Learning

• Effective for both prevention and intervention

• 20+ online modules with a variety of topics will be used in small group and individual format

• Will be utilized by Counselors, Social Workers, and C&C Interventionists

• Parent modules available

Signs of Suicide

• Listed on SAMHSA’s (Substance Abuse and Mental Services Administration)  National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices

• Adult led program that will be used in Mentor groups implemented at all sites.

• Follow up with individual students where needed.

The goals are to:
1) decrease suicide and suicide attempts by increasing student knowledge and adaptive attitudes about depression
2) encourage personal help-seeking and/or help-seeking on behalf of a friend
3) reduce the stigma of mental illness and acknowledge the importance of seeking help or treatment
4) engage school staff as partners in prevention through “gatekeeper” education
5) encourage schools to develop community-based partnerships to support student mental health

Community Based Mental Health

Avita has counselors in 3 sites (Hall, Hill Center and Forsyth) Monday-Thursday.

Georgia HOPE serves an additional 8 sites(Union, Pickens, Fannin, Gilmer, Lumpkin, Dawson, Murray and Bartow). They will provide on site services as needed following an online referral and intake process which they will do onsite.

We are working to find sources to serve the 5 remaining sites (White, Stephens, Habersham, Rabun and Bowman) in a similar capacity.