Introduction

Here you will find:

• What is Mental Health
• Early Warning Signs
• Ways to Cope and Maintain a Positive Mental Health
• Community Resources
• ECCS Mental Health Specialist Contact Information

What is Mental Health? 

Mental Health is our emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It affects the way we think, feel and act. It helps with the way that we manage stress, makes appropriate choices, and socialize with others. Once in the course of our lives, we experience mental health problems. Learning the early signs and ways to cope helps us maintain positive mental health. 

Some of the early warning signs for mental health include:

• Changes in eating and sleeping patterns
• Lack of motivation to complete activities that we used to enjoy
• Isolation
• Feeling hopeless or helpless
• Feeling confused, thoughtful, worried
• Changes in mood and behavior
• Self-harm 

Ways to maintain positive mental health :

• Connecting with others
  • Call your friends
  • Accept other’s help
  • Attend support groups
• Stay Active
  • Take a walk
  • Exercise
  • Try Yoga
  • Meditate
• Unplug
  • Take time to yourself and take a bath, listen to music, practice deep breathing, and journal your thoughts and feelings
• Seek Professional Assistance
  • Call your doctor

Mental Health Specialist Referral Form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSexDM6Fqp7PZPySenK6-Kvqh_JCVrLWyYewl9Xvt3PAMH-d7A/viewform 

Community Resources

• Need someone to talk to? 

• Call 215-686-4420, Available 24/7

• Philadelphia Crisis Line & Children Crisis Mobile Team

• • • 215-685-6440

• Philadelphia Children Crisis Response Center  

• • • Address: 3300 Henry Avenue, Falls Two Building, 3rd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19129
    • Phone: 215-878-2600

• 24/Hr Suicide Prevention and Crisis Intervention Service 215-686-4420

• National Suicide Prevention Lifeline 1-800-273-TALK(8255)

• Red Nacional de Prevencion del Suicidio 1-888-628-9454

Calming Coping Techniques

1. Deep Breathing Technique

• Close your eyes if they’re open.
• Take a few big, deep breaths.
• Breathe in. As you do that, imagine that the air is filled with a sense of peace and calm. Try to feel it throughout your body.
• Breathe out. While you’re doing it, imagine that the air leaves with your stress, tension, and unhappy thoughts.
• Now use a word or phrase with your breath. As you breathe in, say in your mind, “I breathe in peace and calm.”
• As you breathe out, say in your mind, “I breathe out stress, tension, and unhappy thoughts.”
• Continue for 10 to 20 minutes.

2. Imagine a Safe and Happy Place

• Start by getting comfortable in a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed, and take a couple of minutes to focus on your breathing, close your eyes, become aware of any tension in your body, and let that tension go with each out-breath.  
• Imagine a place where you can feel calm, peaceful and safe. It may be a place you’ve been to before, somewhere you’ve dreamed about going to, somewhere you’ve seen a picture of, or just a peaceful place you can create in your mind’s eye.  
• Look around you in that place, notice the colors and shapes. What else do you notice?  
• Now notice the sounds that are around you, or perhaps the silence. Sounds far away and those nearer to you. Those that are more noticeable, and those that are more subtle.  Think about any smells you notice there.  
• Then focus on any skin sensations – the earth beneath you or whatever is supporting you in that place, the temperature, any movement of air, anything else you can touch.  
• Notice the pleasant physical sensations in your body whilst you enjoy this safe place.  
• Now whilst you’re in your peaceful and safe place, you might choose to give it a name, whether one word or a phrase that you can use to bring that image back, anytime you need to.  
• You can choose to linger there a while, just enjoying the peacefulness and serenity. 
• You can leave whenever you want to, just by opening your eyes and being aware of where you are now, and bringing yourself back to alertness in the ‘here and now’.

• Click Here https://www.cmaquarium.org/webcams/ to See the Clearwater Live

• Click Here https://nationalzoo.si.edu/webcams  to See Animals at Smithsonian’s National Zoo Live