Mental Health PlaybookMinding Your Mind
- Geographic Focus: Nationwide with five regional offices (Pennsylvania, New Jersey/New York, New England, Florida and California).
- Mission: Minding Your Mind’s objective is to end the stigma and destructive behaviors often associated with mental health challenges and promote help-seeking behavior in youth through education before reaching a point of crisis.
- Operating Budget: $2,015,800
- People Served: Students (K-college), parents and caregivers, school personnel and the community.
- Focus Areas and Core Competencies: Educate students about mental health, fostering an environment where stigma is reduced and help-seeking is encouraged. Empower adults with the knowledge and skills to support young people.
Impact Statement
Since 2007, Minding Your Mind has reached over two million individuals across the U.S. with mental health and suicide prevention education programs designed for students, adults and community members.
A Conversation with Trish Larsen, executive director of Minding Your Mind
Q: What is the mission of your organization? What specific areas related to mental health challenges are you working to solve?
Minding Your Mind focuses on mental health education for all ages, with an emphasis on K-12 students. Through personal stories and evidence-based education, they encourage young people to seek help and prepare adults to provide support. Our programs, merging real-life experiences with factual mental health education, aim to raise awareness, reduce stigma and teach the language necessary to seek assistance.
The Changing Minds program features young adults sharing their mental health stories to decrease stigma and build emotional wellness skills. For K-4 students, the Kind Minds program fosters emotional awareness and resilience. Minding Your Mind aligns with the Surgeon General’s 2021 call for youth mental health action by offering school-based programs that normalize mental health discussions and provide coping skills, available free of charge to ensure accessibility for all students.
Q: How do you describe the big goals your organization is working to achieve? How do you measure impact?
Minding Your Mind aims to reduce the stigma of mental health and promote help-seeking behavior among young people through its comprehensive, experience-oriented programs. We are the only national organization offering preventative mental health education from K-college, focusing on real-life experiences. Our goal is to become the leading mental health education and suicide prevention resource for schools.
Given the alarming levels of stress and anxiety among U.S. teens, our mission is crucial. We prioritize open conversations and provide coping tools through near-peer education, where young adults share their journeys of overcoming mental health challenges. Our programs are designed to equip youth with the skills they need to face life’s difficulties.
Q: What are some of the biggest challenges the organization has experienced in working to accomplish its mission? How did your organization overcome those challenges?
Minding Your Mind is addressing the rising need for mental health education in schools. While we have the programs and expertise to meet this demand, our expansion depends on increased funding. We operate five regional offices that serve as hubs to deliver cost-effective, high-quality mental health programs nationwide. However, to extend our reach, particularly in underserved areas like the Midwest, we need more financial resources to support additional regional staff and infrastructure. Our growth strategy relies on building relationships and demonstrating our program’s effectiveness, supported by a comprehensive annual marketing and fundraising plan.
Q: What are the organization’s biggest needs? How can philanthropists help your organization achieve its goals?
With a dynamic array of mental health programs for young people, parents and caregivers and school teachers and administrators, we know we can reach more and more people. We work throughout the country, with five regional offices as the epicenters of our programming. Regional offices act as a hub for programs, local speakers and staff; they allow us to provide our programs at no cost to schools and are cost-effective and efficient for the organization.
We field many requests from schools in areas outside of our regional offices, for instance, in the Midwest. To meet the demand, we incur both time and travel costs. Additional funding is necessary to add new regional staff. Increased funding is also necessary for us to effectively expand our reach.
Q: Beyond the organization, where should philanthropists who care about advancing knowledge related to improving mental health invest their charitable dollars?
Minding Your Mind programs give students the knowledge that mental health challenges are normal and treatable, and the skills to speak openly and ask for help. Our work goes hand in hand with mental health professionals, like school counselors, social workers and psychologists. Students and families need mental health professionals who are easy to access and available, without huge waitlists. Yet, there is a shortage of providers, creating an essential need to invest in professionals who can support youth mental health.
Schools and communities want resources to support young people on their mental health journey. This may look like investing in school mental health services, tuition reimbursement programs for mental health professions and/or incentivizing scholarships to increase the mental health workforce. Lower-income areas and communities of color especially need providers who reflect the racial, ethnic and cultural diversity of young people. Integrating mental health support into schools, ensuring access to mental health professionals and creating supportive networks are critical steps toward a holistic approach to adolescent mental health care throughout the country.
Contact Our Team
Contact the Roundtable’s Programs team to learn more about this investment opportunity.