Korean youth trained as depression facilitators under VALIDITY project

A CAMH-led program has equipped young women from the Korean community to help promote knowledge of depression to other young women in that community.

The Girls Talk community program has evolved as a result of a larger project called VALIDITY♀ (Vibrant Action Looking Into Depression In Today’s Young Women♀), which is a participatory action research project aimed at gaining a better understanding of factors that lead to depression in young women, with the goal of ultimately developing strategies, materials, and interventions to address these factors.

The Girls Talk community program, aimed at promoting mental health and preventing depression among adolescent girls, was reported in the Korean-language newspaper the Kyunghyang Post. Girls Talk evolved out of the highly successful VALIDITY Project, which was developed by CAMH regional program consultants.

Girls Talk is an eight-session community program for girls ages 13 to 16 years old focused on preventing and educating young women about depression. This program is not intended for young women who have already been diagnosed with, or in treatment for depression. The goal is to have participants who complete the Girls Talk program be able to demonstrate their understanding of depression: potential causes, symptoms and treatment options. The young women will gain an understanding of the interrelation between depression and self-esteem, body image, stress, relationships and the media. What’s more, they will also build skills to cope with daily life events.

Cathy Thompson, provincial lead of the VALIDITY♀ project along with Katie Cino from Halton’s Youth Net/TAMI program, trained the young women volunteers through For You Telecare Family Service (FUTFS) in North York. She says it was a rare opportunity to build capacity in the Korean community through mainstream agencies.

Cathy Thompson of CAMH, one of the provincial leads of VALIDITY, leads a Girls Talk training session of young Korean women to promote awareness of depression and related issues in their community.

“Language and cultural barriers are often a challenge,” Cathy says. “But from my experience with some of the bilingual youth and young adults who can comfortably negotiate both sides of this boundary, it seems that the bigger issue lies in our community’s inability to seek out existing resources and to incorporate them effectively to make it our own.”

“Girls Talk has the potential to be a huge success within our community,” said Nathan Lee, Executive Director of FUTFS. “The need for peer-led mentorship among teenage girls is definitely there and there are an increasing number of bilingual young women that can step into the role of peer leader.”

The Girls Talk community program began pilot groups in 2005 in Ottawa and Halton. The program continues to be implemented in a variety of communities across Ontario. For more information visit www.camh.net/validity