STRESS WORKSHOP

BY SOPHIA KIRKLAND & SAMMY CONTRERAS

The Issue

Mental illness is a phenomena that many people face everyday.

However, due to negative stigma, they are never treated with the
gravity that they deserve. Many people with mental illness can feel
helpless because of this. These illnesses can become a plague for
anyone, even later in their lives, if they have no release or methods of
coping with the stresses of everyday life.

Proposal

We plan on holding a mental illness workshop, where with the help of

various doctors, we will teach people how mental illnesses work, how
they develop, and how to treat them. The first workshop will take place
for Waxahachie Global High Students. Based on the response of these
students in the workshop, we will conduct another one using our results
gathered from student responses. These two trials will then become the
basis for our final workshop. This last workshop will be our final
product and will be held at Finley Jr. High School, granted that we will
receive approval to do so.

Our Mentor Travis Vick

Travis Vick has a passion and experience in working with the following

Depression

Anxiety

ADHD

Grief

Marriage problems

Parenting issues

Mood disorders

Trauma and Abuse

Identity disorders
His method of treatment utilizes Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which
focuses on the relationship between thinking patterns, emotions, and behaviors.

Benefits and purpose

The benefit of this project is that hopefully it would help many people
understand mental illnesses more, and stop the negative connotations
against them. We also hope that we will be able to offer helpful advice
and life tips to those with mental illnesses including stress, anxiety, and
depression.

Tie to career or personal interest

Sophia Is very interest in Neuroscience and Psychology and wants to go

into both into the future

Sammy is going into counseling psychology.

Tie to Engineering

We want to create our own charts and models of statistics

taken from our own survey at Waxahachie Global High
School on the mental illness levels of the students.

We will also be following the engineering design process

when creating our workshops.

Why we chose this project

As time has passed, Mental Illnesses have become less and less
stigmatized and thought badly of, and we are now seeing many people
speak out about their own mental illnesses. We want to help bring light
to the situation and help people learn how to handle their mental
illnesses with a professionals medical advice.

Research Topic

How the chemicals in the brain cause and affect various mental
illnesses.

Different methods and ways to treat mental illnesses as well as various

cures that are being studied.

Audience

Our Audience in specific will be the students of Waxahachie Global High

School, in general though, our audience is anyone middle school
through high school age.

Milestones

Nov 13: Contacted all possible Medical Professionals

Nov 15: Begin planning events and activities for stress con

Nov 23: Meet with contacts to get ideas

Nov 30: Set dates for the Global Stress con Workshops

Dec 7: Finish creating the activities and workshops

Dec 14: Create invitations/flyers for Stress con

Dec 21: Hopefully will have had first stress con

Dec 28: Review feedback from first stress con

Jan 4: Improve Stress con from the feedback

Jan 18: Plan next Stress Con

Measures of success

After every workshop we will have a small questionnaire for our

audience questions like, Was this workshop enjoyable? Did you learn
ways to deal with mental illnesses? We will then gather up all of that
information to see how we need to improve our workshops to make
them better.

Causes of Anxiety

Lack of personal time

With an intense course load, and little assistance, students may feel
trapped with no help to deal with the struggles of everyday school life.
This may cause anxiety and stress that contributes to students falling
behind in school.

Workshop Activities

Speech by a Medical professional

Fun, stess relieving games! Yay!

Meditation sessio