“I was known as the ‘girl who gets sick easily’ within my family. This really impacted my mental health and acceptance for JIA for years.”
Did you know? Living with Juvenile Arthritis (JA)and other childhood rheumatic diseases like Lupus and JDM can increase your child’s risk of depression and anxiety. A recent Canadian study confirmed this, noting high rates of symptoms of panic disorder in particular.
Cassie + Friends has been working hard to take positive action for mental health by supporting youth with JA and other rheumatic conditions to form supportive peer connections, gain new skills and find trusted information about how to cope with and manage their condition. We also educate families/caregivers, healthcare providers, teachers and employers so youth can get the support and understanding they need to fully participate in school, work and life.
For 2023, we’ve chosen to focus our whole year on Youth Mental Health and have several life-transforming initiatives we’ll be announcing in the coming weeks. This includes the launch of an official youth mentorship program open to all kids and teens with rheumatic disease in Canada and a new research granting opportunity through our Cassie + Friends Care and Research Network.
In the meantime, we wanted to highlight one of our proudest contributions to youth mental health that had impacts far wider than we could have ever imagined! We’ve also listed a few other Cassie + Friends resources for youth, and their caregivers, below.
Today on #BellLetsTalk, we urge you to think about and take an action of your own! Whether your small action is talking to a friend about mental health, re-sharing this story or donating to your favourite youth mental health organization, please know that every action makes a difference.
IMPACT SPOTLIGHT:
Here’s how small actions can make a big difference when it comes to youth mental health.
In 2018, Cassie + Friends made a $50,000 gift to researchers at The Hospital for Sick Children to develop a series of mindfulness videos for iCanCope – a new pain self-management app being developed for 12-18 year olds with Juvenile Arthritis. Those videos soon caught the eye of AboutKidsHealth – a trusted health education resource for children, youth and caregivers that is approved by health-care providers at SicKids and reaches 20 million+ users worldwide each year.
Inspired by our videos, AboutKidsHealth decided, for the first time ever, to expand from providing strictly educational articles to developing coping strategies and resources on their website. That’s when the Medical Psychiatry Alliance stepped in (their mandate is to support youth with co-existing physical and mental illness) and together they were able to springboard C+F’s initial gift to create the brand new Youth Mental Health Portal (YMHP) at AboutKidsHealth.ca.
If you take a look, almost every video has a true mark of pride for our community: “This video was made possible by Cassie + Friends.” Even better, our videos have now ranked up over 4 million views on YouTube with comments like “Thanks, I really needed this” and “This helps me a lot.”
RESOURCES SPOTLIGHT:
Here are some helpful resources we’ve created for mental health:
– The Impact of JIA on Youth Mental Health https://cassieandfriends.ca/resources/tmj/mental-health-week-2020-alisons-journey-with-mental-health-and-arthritis/
– For Youth: Find our webinar, guided meditations, FAQ and mental health stories here:
– For Caregivers: Learn applicable, practical, and highly effective parenting tools specific to caring for children/teens with chronic disease through our webinar, mental health stories and additional resources here:
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