Designing Community-Responsive Mental Health Programs

Are you responsible for health and wellness programming in your library? Have you ever wondered how to create a mental health program that speaks directly to your community? Learn about two of NYPL’s innovative wellness projects: the Community Mental Health Project and the IMLS grant: Building Public Library Capacity for Supporting Young Adult Engagement and Wellbeing. You will leave this session with practical ideas that you can implement at your library, big or small, to support community mental health and wellbeing.

As Library staff started to grapple with the long-term effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the need for a robust health and mental wellness program plan became abundantly clear. It was also apparent that Black and Latinx communities were hit hardest and needed more intentional resources. A four-part plan was developed to focus on: partnership building with mental health professionals, community engagement, collection development and creating community-responsive programs.

The resulting Community Mental Health Project led to the development of a series of short bi-lingual animated videos to provide mental health information tailored to youth, adults and older adults. These were based on and in response to direct feedback from members of the community. Programs and an expanded collection on mental health related books written for and by Black and Latinx people were also a key element of the project. This project inspired a successful ILMS project focused on teen mental health in collaboration with YALSA and Young Adult library staff throughout the country.

Join this session to hear more about the types of partnerships that were important to this project and what they led to, plus practical tips on community-responsive programming and building your collection.