Youth Aware of Mental Health
Mental Health Promotion, Resilience & Suicide Prevention
A structured program that encourages adolescents to learn and develop life-long coping and resilience skills that are shown to help teens and young adults avoid high risk and self-destructive behavior that can lead to poor academic achievement, substance abuse, more severe psychiatric conditions, and even suicide.
Why We Do the Work
The CDRC believes in resilience and a proactive approach to engaging our community
What We Are Doing
Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM) Program
YAM is an interactive universal mental health promotion program for 8th through 12th graders that encourages increased discussion and knowledge about mental health, suicide prevention, and the development of problem-solving skills and emotional intelligence.
YAM uses various learning methods to present the fundamental components of the program in five interactive sessions over 3 weeks.
The YAM program was tested in a European study with over 11,000 students in 168 schools, across ten European countries. When compared to two others programs, the YAM program was more effective in significantly improving adolescent mental health.
YAM Certification for Health-Related Institution (HRI) Personnel
Since the program began in 2016, the CDRC team has reached over 20,000 youth in over 1,100 classrooms with the YAM program. Due to the program’s success, the CDRC team has transitioned to training new facilitators to reach more students and create more sustainable school-based mental health programming.
The CDRC is one of the few organizations currently offering YAM certification, in partnership with Mental Health in Mind International AB, in the United States. Through a partnership with the CDRC, community providers and school staff can be trained to be certified YAM Facilitators. The training takes place over 5 days.
Partners will receive training and ongoing support from Tobi Fuller, Ph.D., M.S.N, RN, an educational psychologist who facilitates the planning of training and ongoing support between CDRC staff and our partners.
Youth Aware of Mental Health (YAM) is a universal mental health literacy and resilience program we are currently implementing in many schools in North Texas and our YAM team began state-wide implementation in the Fall of 2022 as a result of ARPA funding.
Please send an YAM.Texas@UTSouthwestern.edu to Dr. Fuller for more information about our YAM Facilitator training.
YAM Certification for School District Personnel
The CDRC is one of the few organizations currently offering YAM certification, in partnership with Mental Health in Mind International AB, in the United States. Through a partnership with the CDRC, community providers and school staff can be trained to be certified YAM Facilitators. The training takes place over 5 days.
Partners will receive training and ongoing support from Tobi Fuller, Ph.D., M.S.N, RN, an educational psychologist who facilitates the planning of training and ongoing support between CDRC staff and our partners.
One of our goals is to promote resilience and ultimately prevent serious outcomes related to depression. As part of our strategy to accomplish this we have expanded the Training Academy YAM Certification program to make it available to school personnel across the state.
School staff are encouraged to attend the 5-day training held throughout the year in Dallas, TX to become a certified YAM facilitator. Upon completion of the training, educators, counselors, and social workers receive credit for 40 hours of Continuing Professional Education. Having districts train their own staff will exponentially increase the number of students impacted.
Please send an YAM.Texas@UTSouthwestern.edu to Dr. Fuller for more information about our YAM Facilitator training.
Stay Engaged
