Mental Health and Substance Use Disorders in Adolescents

1. Articles should not be older than 5 years
2. Select a mental health issue. Select an issue relevant to Alaska that has an impact on population/community mental health. You are encouraged to select an issue that is relevant to your community group project population. If you have difficulty identifying an issue, consider the following sources:
   a. select an issue from the list of policy issues that appear on the ‘Mental Health America (MHA)’ site located at: http://www.nmha.org/index.cfm?objectid=AD1A34ED-1372-4D20-C8242DCCB5E091CD. For your convenience, a list of the MHA issues is provided at the end of this assignment. Many of these issues are very broad. You may need to focus the issue on a specific aggregate within the population/community. For example, if you select ‘Mental Health Workforce’, you may want to narrow the focus to nurses’ mental health issue rather than focusing on the entire mental health workforce.
   b. select an issue addressed in a legislative bill proposed at the state level (access http://www.akleg.gov/basis/Home/BillsandLaws) or federal level (access https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/)
   Notify your community mental health instructor of your selection no later than the second community mental health seminar meeting. Educate yourself on the issue using scholarly source retrieved primarily from peer reviewed journals and government reports and documents. If you select an issue from MHA, you may want to use the MHA position statement as the starting point in your education on and analysis of the issue.
   In your analysis of the issue, consider the following questions to help you formulate your understanding of the issue:
   • How does this issue affect the population/community or the aggregate in Alaska?
   • What can be expected if nothing is done to address this issue?
   • What action(s) need to be taken and what are the consequences of these actions?
   • What alternative views or counter-arguments exist in reference to the action(s) you propose?
   • Who else cares or can be influenced to care about this issue?
3. Interview a person who has knowledge and/or interest in the issue/topic. Find out what the person knows, thinks and feels about issue/topic. Simply ask, “tell me what you know, think and feel about…”. The findings from the interview should be summarized and included as an appendix to paper. You may also include information from interview within the paper as appropriate.

Advocacy Paper

A. Prepare a 3-4 page paper that includes:

1. Describe the issue/topic with support from scholarly articles, documents, and/or reports
2. Explain relevance of the issue/topic to population/community mental health.
3. Establish your position with support from scholarly literature and/or reports and, if appropriate, brief findings from your interview. Note that findings from your interview may or may not be relevant to establishing your position on the issue.
4. State your recommendation(s) or action(s) you think should be done to address the issue. Identify an alternative view or counter-argument and explain why your point of view or recommendation would be preferred.

Advocacy Issue Letter

1. Determine who has the influence, power and/or position to make what you propose happen; address letter to this person.
2. Compose advocacy letter, one page only, short, clear, civil, respectful, convincing. See syllabus for directions on how to write an advocacy letter, there are also examples on blackboard.

Sample Solution