A Workshop for Jewish Teens
This 1.5 hour, in-person, interactive workshop for Jewish teens focuses on addressing antisemitism. This offering is designed to support Jewish teens to identify and share their experiences of antisemitism in a creative and open environment. We will build space for differing opinions and understandings of antisemitism and its impact, practicing both individual and collective responses. The goal of this workshop is to encourage creativity and resiliency in the face of complicated and painful conversations, supporting Jewish teens to continue these explorations in their communities and families. The workshop is best suited for 12-18 participants, but flexibility is an option.

ASIST is recognized as the world’s leading suicide intervention workshop. Participants learn to identify when someone may be at risk of suicide and to work with them to create a plan that supports their immediate safety.

Designed with colleges and universities in mind, this eight-hour training teaches participants to recognize the symptoms of emerging mental illnesses and to help young adults in mental health crises. Participants will learn about the impact of campus culture on mental health and specific stress and risk factors for students.

This two-hour workshop is intended for high school students and adults who support them. Participants will learn about mental health issues affecting teens and young adults, how to link students to mental health support as well as crisis and non-crisis resources. Participants will also learn about self-care, and how to further improve their mental health knowledge.

This one-hour workshop for teenagers will introduce key concepts in navigating mental health in themselves and their peers. We will explore simple ways to understand common diagnoses and share strategies for managing symptoms. We will address mood disorders (depression and anxiety), substance use and abuse, trauma, and neurodiversity (ADHD and autism spectrum). This workshop can be delivered virtually or in-person.

The COVID pandemic has – and continues to – deeply impact all of our lives. We are all grieving for the people we’ve lost and the lives that have been forever changed. It has caused disruptions to the individual and community rituals that offer us meaning. And the way society frames and talks about grief, especially in relation to the pandemic, can also leave us feeling confused, disembodied, and in a state of pain. This virtual workshop led by Shaida Hossein, Director of Mental Health Education, and Kelsey Schulman, LSWAIC, Mental Health Therapist & Intake Specialist, will explore new approaches to support complex feelings around grief. We will engage in activities to help us make meaning from our individual and collective grief, and share supportive resources to recognize and honor our experiences as well.

This free, virtual training (5.5 hours) teaches attendees about mental health issues, how to identify a person who may be in crisis, and how to start a conversation with a someone who may be experiencing a mental health challenge. This interactive course focuses on increasing participants’ confidence levels to help individuals in distress. It also prepares participants to identify multiple types of professional and self-help resources.

Do you have a child aged 6 to 17 who experiences frequent or ongoing anxiety? This six-week group offers tools and strategies for parents as they support their children through anxiety.  

The program’s approach is informed by the treatment model, Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE), and aims to strengthen strategies and community around parenting anxious children. 

SPACE is a parent-based model for addressing youth anxiety developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center. The model follows a structured path to increase parental support and to decrease parental accommodations for the child’s anxiety.  

In this six-week group, we will introduce the central concepts of SPACE to parents, including what we mean by “accommodations for anxiety,” and how to creatively implement personal boundaries, share reassuring statement, and recruiting and engaging supportive people. The goal is to build connections between parents of anxious children, share tools and resources for navigating the impact of anxiety on families, and support your children’s resiliency.   

The group will be guided by Shaida Hossein (she/her), OTD, Director of Counseling and Mental Health Education and Rebecca Coates-Finke (she/her), LMHCA, P-RDT, Teen and Young Adult Mental Health Counselor.

A workshop to help navigate conversations about suicide with teens and young adults. Learn how to identify warning signs, how to approach these conversations, and understand misconceptions and risk factors around suicide and depression. In this one-hour workshop attendees will have the opportunity to practice skills during a fictitious scenario and ask questions. Anyone 18 or older living in Washington state is eligible to attend.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for children and young adults between the ages of 10-24 years old. Each day in the United States, more than 5,240 students in grades 7-12 attempt suicide, and rates of suicidal ideation (thinking about and planning suicide) and suicide attempts rose significantly among adolescents ages 11–21 in 2020, according to a study published in the journal Pediatrics. In fact, rates of both ideation and attempts were almost twice as high in the months of February through July 2020, in comparison to the same months in 2019. Research shows that teenagers are among the demographics most likely to experience elevated suicide risk during the pandemic.

To register email Shaida Hossein at shossein@jfsseattle.org.

Being a teenager can be hard—and so can being a parent of one, especially during a global crisis. Everyone deserves a little extra support right now, and we’re excited to start offering virtual Parent Coaching sessions. These free sessions are designed for parents and caregivers of teens and young adults. Over the course of your sessions (1-3 available), we’ll explore managing COVID-related stress and coping, strengthening communication skills and navigating peer and romantic relationships. If you are interested in this new offering, please begin the intake process by emailing cas@jfsseattle.org that you are interested in parent coaching.

Burnout now dominates cultural conversations around school and work. Students and workers alike share that they feel like they are expected to uphold pre-pandemic standards, while feeling disengaged from life and managing chronic mental health issues. In this workshop, explore aspects of yourself in relationship to school or work. The more you know about yourself, the better equipped you will be to face the world from a position of understanding and realism–ready to improve in some areas and to shine in others, while practicing self-compassion. In this workshop, you will be able to:

• Recognize signs of chronic fatigue, burnout, and compassion fatigue
• Identify specific action items (skills, techniques) necessary to promote resilience
• Build skills in compassionate communication
• Develop an individualized self-care plan
• Become more familiar with resources that can help improve wellness

In this training, participants will learn the TALK steps (Tell, Ask, Listen, and KeepSafe) to prevent suicide by recognizing signs, engaging someone, and connecting them to an intervention resource for further support.

A Workshop for Parents and/or Professionals
This 1.5 hour interactive workshop addresses working with teens who are experiencing or recognizing antisemitism in their lives. It can be adapted for professionals working with teens or for parents and caregivers of teens. The goal of this workshop is to support adults to recognize their own feelings and reactions to antisemitic incidents, to cultivate space between their experience and that of the teens in their lives, and to identify useful strategies and perspectives in responding to these incidents with their teens. Before the workshop, participants will send the facilitator examples of antisemitic incidents that have been impactful. This workshop can be led virtually or in person for up to 20 participants.

This introductory training teaches the warning signs and risk factors for suicide and how we can help prevent this leading cause of death. Participants will learn national and state suicide statistics, the causes of and risk factors for suicide, information about effective prevention, how to offer help and identify people at risk.

tMHFA (Teen Mental Health First Aid) is a training program for teens, launched by the National Council for Mental Wellbeing in partnership with Born This Way Foundation. It teaches teens in grades 10-12, or ages 15-18, how to identify, understand and respond to signs of mental health and substance use challenges in their friends and peers. In addition, the program teaches teens about the impact of school violence and bullying on mental health, and how to seek the help of a responsible and trusted adult.

How tMHFA can help:

• Course content addresses common mental health challenges in young people.
• Understanding reduces stigma.
• Teens will come away with an Action Plan to help friends and peers who may be facing a mental health challenge or crisis, such as suicidal ideation.
• Teens will learn how and when to involve a responsible and trusted adult.

For many students, the turmoil and unpredictability of the past couple of years and the change of going back into the classroom have magnified their anxiety. Although 65% of students say they prefer in-person learning, school comes with stressors as well as benefits. In this workshop for staff supporting students, you will be able to:

• Recognize anxiety and how it presents in elementary-aged and/or middle-school students
• Identify if a student needs help with anxiety
• Gain strategies and resources to support students who feel anxious
• Design activities specifically to destigmatize and lower anxiety levels

This one-hour workshop will provide psychoeducation on the causes of anxiety, addressing the very real fears today’s teens are facing and the ways those fears can begin to grow out of control. We will take into account environmental concerns such as global warming, school shootings, radicalizing politics, and academic pressures, as well as the impact of intergenerational trauma. Participants will be given opportunities to share strategies for managing anxiety that have worked for them, as well as the barriers they find when trying to live the life they choose alongside their anxiety. This workshop can be delivered virtually or in-person.

When you feel overwhelmed, your first instinct may be to first remove things that help your emotional, mental, and physical wellbeing to focus on responsibilities, but recognizing this is when we need self-care even more as an act of survival. Introducing, maintaining and building self-care into your daily life can get us through difficult times; we can go from surviving to thriving.

Right now, we are adjusting to a new phase of pandemic life, and it is critical to be thinking holistically about our wellness. In this one-hour, interactive workshop, you will have the opportunity to explore why self-care is important, recognize ways to care for yourself, and practice building a resiliency mindset. You deserve self-care, and we all can benefit with finding tiny ways to be kinder to ourselves.

Supporting Teens Navigating Mental Health Challenges
This is a workshop for professional staff interacting with youth. The goal of this workshop is to support professionals to identify the capacity of their role in relation to the youths they serve, and to understand the importance of staying within the borders around that role. We will build skills around recognizing when professionals are being activated and/or dysregulated, and we will acknowledge and address the grief that arises when they are unable to respond to every problem youth share with them. This workshop can be delivered virtually or in person and can run from 45 minutes to two hours.

This free, virtual training (4.5 hours) gives attendees the skills to provide initial support to adolescents (ages 12-18) who may be developing mental health or substance challenges, or who are in crisis. Participants will have the opportunity to decrease stigma around mental illness and substance use, increase mental health literacy when working with young people, and serve as a vital link between youth and appropriate professional help.