Sparking Conversations Around Teen Mental Health

Keith Boushee, Community Strategist Director, Netsmart
Ashleigh Hall, Grants Marketing Manager, Centerstone

Comic books have been popular with teenagers for generations. Hoping to both educate and entertain teenagers, Centerstone, a Kentucky-based behavior health provider, developed a comic book series featuring a variety of important topics.

Ashleigh Hall, Marketing Manager at Centerstone, joined Keith Boushee on this episode of Netsmart CareThreads to talk about how her team created a series of comic books to successfully deliver mental health messages to teens.

After receiving a grant from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS), Centerstone decided to lay the foundation for bringing Spark, the main character, to life. They hired a graphic designer who specializes in comic books to design the series. Spark tackles controversial topics in the series including:

Sex messaging
Bullying
Under-age drinking
Opioid issues
Depression
Online relationships

Since launching the series in 2014, over 60,000 books have been distributed. By including discussion prompts at the end of each book, the books can be used in a classroom setting. Centerstone hopes to bridge the gap between parents and children as well as show these issues can affect everyone, everywhere. The series has also been popular in schools with many counselors and principals helping to distribute the comics.

In partnership with Centerstone, we are giving away 50 sets of our comic book series. Enter for your chance to win.

This discussion with Ashleigh Hall was taken from our show Netsmart CareThreads. If you want to hear more episodes like this one, check us out on Apple Podcasts.

If you don’t use Apple Podcasts, you can find every episode here.

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