Mental Health America Fredericksburg Region

Pride Month panel discussion on LGBTQIA+ Allyship
2024-06-14 13:30 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Howell Library, 806 Lyons Boulevard, Fredericksburg, VA, 22406, United States

The Art of Aging: Life Begins at 50
2024-06-12 10:00 - 14:00 | Fredericksburg Convention Center, 2371 Carl D. Silver Pkwy, Fredericksburg, VA, 22401, United States
Join Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff at the Partner in Aging Art of Aging: Life Begins at 50 Expo! This is a free community event and open to the public. We hope to see you there!

Monthly Senior Visitors Volunteer Meeting
2024-06-11 19:00 - 20:00 | VA
Join us for our monthly Senior Visitors volunteer meeting. Our dedicated volunteers connect with older adults in our community through the Senior Visitors program at Mental Health America of Fredericksburg. Together, we combat loneliness, promote mental well-being, and build lasting friendships.
If you are a current volunteer, an invitation link has been sent to your email inbox. If you are experiencing any difficulties, please reach out to the Senior Visitors Program Lead with any questions or concerns.
Call us at (540) 371-2704 or click here for more information on how to become a volunteer with Senior Visitors.

Memorial Day
2024-05-27 | VA

Webinar: Rooting Young Adult Mental Health Services in Culturally Sustaining Values & Practices
2024-05-22 18:00 - 19:30 | VA
Session 4 of 4 in the “Rooting Young Adult Mental Health Services in Culturally Sustaining Values & Practices” Series (view series main page for full details)
Honoring and Supporting Peer Support in Healing-Centered Approaches
May 22, 2024: Session 4
This session’s essential question is: How might organizations truly value, uplift, and support the wisdom and skill of those with lived experience? Join us as we explore peer support in healing-centered engagement.
The learning objectives include:

How YYA serving organizations can implement peer support providers, and uplift lived experience professionals
Learn about the power and benefits of peer support in a young person’s life
Ways to implement peer support in young people’s treatment plan as a way to promote employment opportunities and belonging
How to create youth leadership programming and youth voice initiatives

Main Series Program Goals

Counter the impacts of vicarious trauma and burn out by creating a safe and responsive learning community for the YYA workforce to be heard and seen in their efforts to support the holistic needs of their clientele.
Build an understanding of healing centered engagement and approaches to youth development and case management that strengthens service provision for transition-aged youth.
Expand our organizational and individual capacity to support young adult holistic wellness, critical consciousness development, and collective healing.

Audience
All community-based organizations, institutions, and mental health professionals, including peer support specialists, therapists, psychologists, counselors, and others who support the mental health and wellness of transition-aged youth.
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff are attending this workshop and wanted to share this opportunity with you.

Board Meeting (Teams)
2024-05-21 17:30 - 20:30, 2024-03-19 17:30 - 20:30, 2024-01-30 17:30 - 20:30 | VA

Annual MHAfred Mental Health Wellness Walk
2024-05-04 09:00 - 12:00 | VA
MHAfred holds this walk the first Saturday in May. Your support helps us raise money for the free programs that we offer. Together we can make an impact to raise awareness about mental health and wellness in our community. Join us as we walk a million steps towards mental wellness!

Webinar: Rooting Young Adult Mental Health Services in Culturally Sustaining Values & Practices
2024-04-24 18:00 - 19:30 | VA
Session 3 of 4 in the “Rooting Young Adult Mental Health Services in Culturally Sustaining Values & Practices” Series (view series main page for full details)
Uplifting Culturally Sustaining Practices in Substance Use Prevention
April 24, 2024: Session 3
This session’s essential question is: How might we challenge the deficit model permeating prevention and recovery to make space for culturally sustaining perspectives and practices in the field?
Main Series Program Goals

Counter the impacts of vicarious trauma and burn out by creating a safe and responsive learning community for the YYA workforce to be heard and seen in their efforts to support the holistic needs of their clientele.
Build an understanding of healing centered engagement and approaches to youth development and case management that strengthens service provision for transition-aged youth.
Expand our organizational and individual capacity to support young adult holistic wellness, critical consciousness development, and collective healing.

Audience
All community-based organizations, institutions, and mental health professionals, including peer support specialists, therapists, psychologists, counselors, and others who support the mental health and wellness of transition-aged youth.
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff are attending this workshop and wanted to share this opportunity with you.

Webinar: The Heart Work: Equity-Centered Coaching Practices for Trauma-Informed Collegiality and Collective Healing
2024-04-24 17:30 - 19:00 | VA
Workshop 6 of 6 in the “Trauma-Informed, In School Sessions” Workshop Series (view series page for full details)
The Heart Work: Equity-Centered Coaching Practices for Trauma Informed Collegiality and Collective Healing
Trauma Informed Principle to Practice: Cultural Humility As systemic inequities and trauma are often intertwined, addressing their connection becomes crucial in trauma-informed school communities. Centering equity in every student interaction and adult partnership supporting the school system is essential. The capacity for the adults responsible for implementing trauma-informed practices grounded in equity is nurtured through equity-centered coaching.
In this workshop, we will explore the principles of equity-centered coaching to cultivate trauma-informed school environments. Coaching conversations, grounded in active listening, cultural humility, and psychological safety, model the equitable interactions we hope administrators have with educators and providers so that educators and providers can offer the same experience with their students.
Together, we will examine our own identities, assumptions, patterns, and beliefs – creating space for new perspectives. This self-reflection enables us to recognize how inequities and trauma manifest in our schools. As we build self-awareness about our experiences and worldviews, we become better able to perceive concerning dynamics and interrupt cycles of harm.
This workshop invites us to envision the trauma-informed and healing-centered schools we desire – places where adults possess the tools to nurture their well-being and fully empower students. We will review evidence-based tools, rationale, and resources to foster cultural humility, mitigate systemic barriers, and build trusting partnerships across the school community.
Audience: Educators, school site leaders, school mental health professionals, youth advocates, teacher educators, school mental health graduate school educators, higher education administrators, and anyone interested in equity centered coaching in school cultures.
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff will be attending this workshop and we wanted to share this resource with you.

Board Meeting (In-Person)
2024-04-23 19:00 - 21:00 | VA

Heppe 15K
2024-04-21 07:00 - 10:30 | 713 Sophia Street Fredericksburg, VA US 22401
All proceeds will be donated to Mental Health America of Fredericksburg.

Webinar: "You Can Talk to Me": A Family Guide to Support Students' Mental Health and Well-Being Trauma Informed Principle to Practice: Trustworthiness & Transparency, Collaboration & Mutuality
2024-04-17 17:30 - 19:00 | VA
“You Can Talk to Me”: A Family Guide to Support Students’ Mental Health and Well-Being
Trauma Informed Principle to Practice: Trustworthiness & Transparency, Collaboration & Mutuality
How might we partner with parents, caregivers and families through trauma informed approaches to support the mental health and well-being of the children and teens in their lives? In 2023, Project Cal-Well (a cross-agency mental health initiative led by the California Department of Education to promote mental health awareness and wellness among California’s K-12 students) designed the Family Guide to Supporting Young People’s Mental Health and Well-Being for parents and other caregivers (available in English and Spanish), with input from families, educators, mental health professionals, and youth. By sharing tips for families on how to have conversations about social media use, mental health, anti-LGBTQ experiences, bullying and more, this guide provides parents and other caregivers with information and easy-to-use strategies to support their children’s overall well-being and mental health.
How did the guide’s authors partner with students and their families to create this guide? How might we support students and families to dig into its information and leverage this resource to partner with parents and other caretakers? Join us to explore these questions, and the guide itself, while learning from several of its authors about how the guide’s development process was trauma informed.
Participants will: (1) learn about the development and content of the guide; (2) have the opportunity to consider how to get the guide and related local resources into the hands of families; and (3) generate ideas for how to use individual sections of the guide to align with a school’s continuum of trauma-informed approaches and social, emotional, and behavioral supports.
Audience: Educators, school site leaders, school mental health professionals, youth advocates, trauma-informed professionals, family and caregivers, family mental health advocates, technical assistance providers, and anyone interested.
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff will be attending this workshop and we wanted to share this resource with you.

FCPS Mental Health Resource Fair Vendor Registration
2024-04-13 09:00 - 14:00 | James Monroe High School, 2300 Washington Ave, Fredericksburg, VA, 22401, United States
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff will be attending, and we wanted to share this resource with you.

Webinar: Counseling with Care: Trauma-Informed School Counseling Practices
2024-04-10 17:30 - 19:00 | VA
Counseling with Care: Trauma Informed School Counseling Practices
Trauma Informed Principle to Practice: Peer Support, Empowerment
Are you a school counselor, becoming a school counselor, or someone who teams/works with school counselors? Zeyda Garcia, founder of Healing Aguas Wellness Solutions and school counseling professor, joins our series to share how we can anchor and apply trauma-informed principles in school counseling practices, programs, and policies. In this workshop we will discuss a high-level overview of trauma, its impacts on students, and different strategies we can implement to support young people in counseling settings.
Utilizing trauma informed school counseling practices, we can support young people in regulating their own nervous system and support them in accessing their education. Join us as we reflect on our unique school and personal practices, in order to enhance our trauma-informed support of students.
Participants will walk away with practical tools they can use in sessions with students, families, and school-wide. Most importantly, and in Zeyda’s words, the workshop hopes to offer school counselors with “more creativity, courage and confidence in yourself as a counselor and a commitment to caring for yourself.”
Audience: School counselors, school-based clinicians, counselor educators, counselor supervisors, mental health counselors, and anyone interested.
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff will be attending this workshop and we wanted to share this resource with you.

Charity Dinner Night at Cider Lab
2024-04-08 18:00 - 21:00 | Cider Lab, 7501 Graham St Suite 128, Spotsylvania, VA, 22553, United States
A portion of the cost of the meal will be donated from Heppe Chiropractic to Mental Health America of Fredericksburg.

Webinar: The Power of a Witness: Using Narrative Exposure Therapy (an Evidence Based Approach) to Support Students’ Trauma Recovery
2024-04-03 17:30 - 19:00 | VA
The Power of a Witness: Using Narrative Exposure Therapy (an Evidence Based Approach) to Support Students’ Trauma Recovery
Trauma Informed Principle to Practice: Empowerment, Collaboration
This workshop provides an exploration of Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET), an evidence-based approach tailored for adults or children, particularly refugees and immigrants, with multiple traumatic experiences. Kids Narrative Exposure Therapy (KIDNET) is a therapy designed for children and adolescents who have experienced trauma, especially in conflict zones. KIDNET therapy focuses on reprocessing traumatic memories by contrasting the memories with the present feelings through narration. It focuses on helping them process their traumatic memories by creating a “lifeline” and uses techniques like storytelling, art, and role-play to aid in healing and recovery.
Led by Dr. Alejandra Acuña, this workshop guides us towards a comprehensive understanding of NET’s principles and techniques, learning how to utilize storytelling to help students process and integrate traumatic memories resulting in reduced PTSD symptoms. Attendees will walk away equipped with practical strategies and insights to provide culturally responsive support to students, fostering resilience and facilitating healing within diverse educational settings (e.g., green lights, yellow lights, and red lights of NET implementation!).
Importantly, Dr. Acuña will share not only about the evidence based approach, but how the implementation of it in itself can and should be trauma-informed and culturally responsive so that students and their families experience their recovery through the trauma-informed principles of empowerment and collaboration
Audience: School mental health professionals (school social workers, school psychologists, school counselors), student support services administrators and supervisors, and anyone interested.
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff will be attending this workshop and we wanted to share this resource with you.

Webinar: Youth In Crisis: Supporting youth through school and clinic-based mental health programs
2024-04-03 11:30 | VA
Trauma harms children emotionally, psychologically, and biologically and untreated experiences can lead to suicide, substance abuse, serious emotional disturbance, poor school and work performances, social maladjustment, and decrease health and well-being. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) states that one in six children and adolescents ages 6-17 years old will experience an adverse childhood experience and/or serious mental illness and that 50 percent of those mental health disorders will surface around the age of 14. The pandemic has taken a toll on the mental health of many Americans and research reflects an increase in alcohol use and at least one illicit drug use disorder in the past years.
In this presentation, we will address how youths facing traumatic episodes have developed unhealthy coping skills that negatively impact their academic success and developmental growth. We will offer helpful strategies for addressing trauma and grief, substance abuse, and other barriers that can negatively affect student learning, growth, and development through school- and clinic-based mental health programs.
Learning Objectives

To provide strategies for working collaboratively with school and community partners to provide a systemic approach to mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences on student learning and growth.
To increase awareness of how to effectively implement trauma-informed practices through a school-based mental health program.

Speakers
Dr. Deborah E. Purge (Lead Presenter), Center Manager, Dallas ISD
Dr. Tracey Brown, Executive Director of Mental Health Services, Dallas ISD
Crystal Arriola, Center Manager for the Mental Health Services Department for of the Dallas Independent School District
If you have any questions, please contact Kelle Masten via email at kelle.masten@nasmhpd.org or Paige Thomas at paige.thomas@nasmhpd.org.
Live closed captioning and ASL interpreters will be available for this webinar.
***Post materials will be emailed to you within a few days after the webinar. This will include the recording link, powerpoint slides and a certificate of attendance as we do not offer CEU credits.

Placement

Webinar

Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff will be attending this training, and we wanted to share this opportunity with you.

UMW Health and Wellness Fair
2024-04-03 11:00 - 15:00 | Cedric Rucker University Center, 1301 College Avenue, Fredericksburg, 22401, United States
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg (MHAfred) will attend this event and provide resources.

Rural Mental Health Resilience Program Launch Webinar
2024-03-27 19:00 - 20:30 | VA
Recognizing the self-reliance and do-it-yourself mindset that are common among many people living in rural America, the Rural Mental Health Resilience Program provides a toolkit with free mental health information, resources and training to help rural residents improve mental health in their communities.
This webinar will feature the experience of those who have already used the program to start a conversation about mental health in their rural communities. In addition to sharing best practices and hosting a Q&A session, we will briefly demonstrate how to easily access materials on the program’s webpage so you can:

Empower yourself and others with the knowledge to become part of the solution for improving rural mental health and reducing the stigma surrounding mental illness in your community.

Know the facts about rural mental health challenges, mental illness and suicide.

Confront the mental health emergency in your local community and throughout rural America.

Encourage or lead difficult conversations about mental illness and suicide that must be heard.

Serve as a trusted source of information so you can help your family, friends and community.

The webinar will be moderated by Rural Minds Vice President of Communications Julie Lux and presented live via Zoom with the option to hear audio as listen-only.
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff are attending this workshop and wanted to share this opportunity with you.

Webinar: Rooting Young Adult Mental Health Services in Culturally Sustaining Values & Practices
2024-03-27 18:00 - 19:30 | VA
Session 2 of 4 in the “Rooting Young Adult Mental Health Services in Culturally Sustaining Values & Practices” Series (view series page for full details)
Challenging Oppression in Healing Work
March 27, 2024: Session 2
This second session in the series asks: How might we create safe and brave spaces to uplift the wisdom and leadership of historically targeted identities in healing work?
The learning objectives include:

How to create brave and safe spaces for young people who are historically oppressed
Teaching advocacy to young people to ensure they know their rights and how to heal through oppression
Incorporate ways to implement healing-centered care within the workplace to work against oppression

Main Series Program Goals

Counter the impacts of vicarious trauma and burn out by creating a safe and responsive learning community for the YYA workforce to be heard and seen in their efforts to support the holistic needs of their clientele.
Build an understanding of healing centered engagement and approaches to youth development and case management that strengthens service provision for transition-aged youth.
Expand our organizational and individual capacity to support young adult holistic wellness, critical consciousness development, and collective healing.

Audience
All community-based organizations, institutions, and mental health professionals, including peer support specialists, therapists, psychologists, counselors, and others who support the mental health and wellness of transition-aged youth.
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff are attending this workshop and wanted to share this opportunity with you.

Webinar: Trauma-Informed Bullying Interventions Trauma Informed Principle to Practice: Safety, Cultural Humility;
2024-03-27 17:30 - 19:00 | VA
Workshop 2 of 6 in the “Trauma-Informed, In School Sessions” Workshop Series (view series page for full details)

Trauma-Informed Bullying Interventions
Trauma Informed Principle to Practice: Safety, Cultural Humility We all want to intervene in bullying (both of students and staff), but how might we do so in a way that is trauma informed? Join us and Valerie White for a session aimed to equip participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to address bullying in a compassionate and trauma-sensitive way. Bullying can have profound and lasting effects, especially when individuals have experienced trauma. This session provides insights into understanding the intersection of bullying and trauma, offering practical strategies for prevention, intervention, and fostering a community of belonging.
Audience: Educators, school site leaders, school mental health professionals, youth advocates, teacher educators, school mental health graduate school educators, higher education administrators, and anyone interested.
Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff are attending this workshop and wanted to share this opportunity with you.

Webinar: Building a framework for developing a comprehensive school-based mental health program
2024-03-27 11:30 - 12:30 | VA
In 1995 to 1997, a seminal study found a strong correlation between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and the development of risk factors for disease and well-being through the lifespan. Other studies have shown that almost 35 million children have been exposed to or have experienced some form of violence, neglect, or other childhood trauma at least once in their childhood. Researchers have asserted that the impact of childhood trauma is a hidden American health crisis, and this impact has lifelong implications and is the greatest health issue facing our generation today.
It is important for school systems to begin early mental health services to help address serious mental illness and the emotional and behavioral needs of the students and their families. A comprehensive school-based mental health program is vital and can be implemented to support the mental health needs of students, address serious emotional disturbance, reduce suspension and truancy, and positively impact academic success. We will share a mental health framework for schools that has been proven to be effective and successful in helping students to manage their mental health challenges and achieve academic success.
Learning Objectives

To provide a framework and mental health resources for schools that will support students’ needs and academic success.
To provide a road map for the evaluation, planning, implementation, and sustainability of a school-based mental health services program, while also addressing challenges and barriers to implementation.

Speakers
Dr. Deborah E. Purge, Center Manager for Dallas ISD
Dr. Tracey Brown (Lead Presenter), Executive Director of Mental Health Services for Dallas ISD
Dr. Annmarie Perez, Psy.D., L.P., Mental Health Services (MHS) Quality Assurance Manager for Dallas ISD

Placement

Webinar

Mental Health America of Fredericksburg staff will attend this training, and we wanted to share it with you.

Charity Dinner Night at Mason Dixon
2024-03-25 17:00 - 21:00 | Mason Dixon Cafe, 2100 Princess Anne Street, Fredericksburg, VA, 22401, United States

Community Connections Expo
2024-03-19 09:00 - 17:00 | VA

Presidents Day
2024-02-19 | VA

Board Retreat (In-Person)
2024-02-17 08:00 - 13:00 | VA

MHAfred will be attending Youth First Conference
2024-02-16 08:30 - 15:30 | Fredericksburg Convention Center, 2371 Carl D. Silver Pkwy, Fredericksburg, VA, 22401, United States

MHAfred Closed for New Years Holiday
2024-01-01 | VA
https://www.mhafred.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Keep-Being-Fabulous-See-where-this-Year-Takes-You.mp4
