MVCEAB Subcommittee Plans Mental Health Fair For Local Families

By VERNON ROBISON

The Progress

The members of a subcommittee of the Moapa Valley Community Education Advisory Board (MVCEAB) reported to the full board last week on an ambitious set of plans it has made for the coming weeks in highlighting mental health resources available to school kids and their families.

At a MVCEAB meeting held on Friday, July 23, members of the board’s Community Education Subcommittee explained that that they have been planning a Moapa Valley Mental Health Fair event for local youth and their families. This fair is being planned for Thursday, September 9.

The event will feature Kevin Hines, a well-known suicide prevention speaker who gained nationwide fame for surviving an attempt to take his own life by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

“Mr. Hines will participate, not only with the Mental Health Fair, but he will also speak at assemblies in the schools,” said subcommittee member Erika Whitmore who also works as a social worker at Mack Lyon Middle School in Overton.

The event will have a number of booths, exhibits and tables offering various resources that are available for families to get help when family members are dealing with anxiety, depression, panic attacks, suicide ideation and more, Whitmore said.

“We don’t have a lot of resources for dealing with those things out here in our community,” Whitmore said. “So at this event, families will be able to plug into those resources to get help for their kids, or even themselves if they are dealing with these things.”

The MVCEAB has written a grant for a large portion of the $18,000 needed in putting on this mental health fair, according to MVCEAB Chairwoman Wendy Mulcock. But the organization is still trying to raise an additional $8,000 to pay the rest of the expenses.

“We are going to go to the community to help raise those funds,” Mulcock said. “So if any of the MVCEAB members have any ideas on how to do that, please let us know.”

To help in that effort, as well as other initiatives, the Subcommittee is establishing a Teen Leadership Corps for the upcoming school year. MVCEAB member Dianna Walker is taking the lead on this group’s formation.

Walker said that it would be similar to the 4-H group that stepped in last year as the defacto high school student council when CCSD restrictions prevented the Moapa Valley High School student council from operating during the pandemic. This group made plans for school activities and events that had to be carried out by parent volunteers at venues outside of CCSD facilities.

“We are wanting to do that same kind of thing this year, but broaden the scope to help fill these community needs,” Walker said. “We can utilize a broader swath of kids; like maybe kids who don’t have the confidence to run for student council but still have leadership qualities. I think it would be a great opportunity for kids. So if you know anyone interested please send them our way.”

The group would be more than just high school-age kids, Walker added. It could also include kids at the middle school level.

The work of the group would be to help carry out some of the community plans being set forward by the Community Education Subcommittee.

“They will have a voice in these things,” Walker said. “We are noticing that it feels like, over the last year and a half, kids have been kind of shut down with no voice on how they can make things better. This would give them that.”

“It is one thing for adults to say ‘Hey! there is a mental health issue out there. How do we solve it?’,” Walker added. “But in this case, the youth will be leading the discussion on that. They will be the ones who say this is what we are seeing and they will have a voice in the direction our subcommittee takes in planning the mental health event we are coordinating as well as other events down the road.”

All of these efforts will be discussed at a special town hall meeting being held on Tuesday, August 3 at 6:30 pm in the Overton Community Center. All in the community, youth and adult, are encouraged to participate in this meeting.

“We are inviting leaders from all of our community organizations, as many people as we can get, to come to that meeting to introduce our community to the future vision for this Community Education Subcommittee,” Mulcock said. “We are trying to unite our community around our youth and their needs. We hope that folks will get involved.”