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This Year's Project: Suicide Prevention & Youth Peer Support
About Our Organization
Heartland Counseling Services Inc. provides much needed mental health and substance abuse services to at-risk children, families and underserved individuals across Siouxland regardless of their insurance or residency status. Your support will help us carry out our motto: “Changing lives. Healing hearts. One day at a time!” Despite the unstable and evolving world events, we continue to offer that hope by adapting to the changing environment and responding to the needs of our vulnerable populations and those experiencing anxiety, isolation and depression for the first time. With a client base from the area where 80% are low income, even government subsidies can’t keep families afloat especially when they now also need mental health and substance use services. Your support would allow Heartland to continue to provide care (and hope!) to anyone, regardless of their COVID status and regardless of their ability to pay for services or to pay their deductibles.
Heartland Counseling Services, Inc., established in 1977, is a 501(c)3, community behavioral health center that serves the greater Siouxland community including 11 Region 4 counties in Nebraska and Siouxland area counties in Iowa and South Dakota. Our mission is to provide quality mental health and substance abuse services to the communities in which we serve. We provide multiple services that include outpatient mental health and substance abuse therapy, School Based Mental Health Program, substance abuse prevention in the schools, Girls Inc & Boys and Girls Club, crisis response team, intensive outpatient program, tele-psychiatry, DUI classes, day rehab program (The Life Center), Permanent Supported Housing Program, Housing Assistance Common Fund Program, and Community Support, Recovery Support, Peer Support, and Youth Peer Support programs. We serve individuals ages 3 to 103.
Current Project: Suicide Prevention & Youth Peer Support
Help our kids say YES to life!
The deck is stacked against them ...
~ Nebraska opioid use increased 46%, methamphetamine use 73% in Nebraska between 2017-2020!
~ Challenges of mental illness, trauma, substance abuse, LGBTQIA+, ethnic or racial differences increase the vulnerability of our underserved youth.
~ COVID exacerbated risk factors for poor mental health especially anxiety and stress.
~ 82% of youth in systems of care have experienced at least one traumatic event before entering services; 41% of those with a trauma history have had suicidal thoughts (SAMHSA 2018).
~ 25% of young adults have seriously contemplated suicide during the COVID crisis (CDC 2020).
YOU can help! Our youth need services now! YOU can make a difference in their lives! AND your gift will be DOUBLED* thanks to F&M Bank!
Meet Tommy** ...
Tommy** came to Heartland after getting out of the hospital for being suicidal. He suffers from depression and anxiety. We were able to get him started with therapy, participating in Youth Peer Support, and he started going to The Life Center. These services helped Tommy better control his behaviors, improve relationships in his life, and graduate from high school. Now we're assisting him in finding his first job and becoming independent in life.
Meet Sara** ...
Sara** was having a very tough senior year - full of trials and tribulations. She was working hard by going to school and getting in her required intern hours, all while also taking care of siblings and home life. Although she should have been enjoying her final year of high school, she was required to be a caregiver and very independent. Thanks to services at Heartland, including Youth Peer Support, Sara was able to talk through her struggles, get the support she needed, and graduate from high school.
Heartland's Certified Youth Peer Support Specialist, Jasmine Russell, reflects back on the first year of the program, "Many of the youth in the program are struggling, trying to figure out how to fit in and wondering if there is anyone else out there 'like' me. The middle school youth seem to be having the hardest time trying to do anything to fit in. It can be viewed as "attention-seeking", but in actuality, they simply need support as they try to find out who they are and who they want to be. ... I find it easy to relate to many of their stories and can understand what it is like to hide or be ashamed of the parts of themselves that the world might not be ready to accept. They have taught me that more so now than ever, being your true authentic self is okay regardless of what people think or say."
YOUR GIFT TODAY helps wrap services around these kids. YOUR GIFT gives them hope. YOUR GIFT can give them LIFE! AND your gift can be DOUBLED thanks to matching funds from F&M Bank!!
*F&M Bank is matching up to $2,500 in donations made to Heartland Counseling's "Suicide Prevention & Youth Peer Support" project through the Siouxland Big Give. THANK YOU!!
**Names have been changed to protect these individuals and keep their stories private and confidential.
Suicide Prevention & Youth Crisis
Nothing can explain the pain and the loss felt by family and friends when a loved one takes their own life. Unfortunately, suicide rates in Siouxland continue to see an increase especially as COVID anxieties, depression, and isolation take their toll. And suicide does not discriminate – we are seeing children, women, parents, men, and our elderly suffering and taking their own lives.
Heartland Counseling Services has been working tirelessly to respond to crisis calls, to wrapping services around individuals contemplating suicide, to prevent suicide, and to counsel those left behind from a completed suicide. Your support of this Siouxland Big Give Project will help enable continued education and prevention of suicide and help fund our Youth Crisis Response Team. Your gift will:
- Raise awareness and break the stigma associated with mental illness,
- Promote positive mental health,
- Help children and other individuals get the mental health services they need,
- Wrap multiple services around those children and individuals to keep them out of our hospitals and morgues, and
- Help fund our Youth Crisis Response Team – a critical Team at Heartland that was just notified that it will no longer be financially underwritten by the state.
PLUS, your donation will go TWICE as far thanks to a generous match being offered by F&M Bank of up to $2,500! F&M Bank has already committed to investing in Suicide Prevention and Youth Crisis – to investing in the children, families and individuals in Siouxland – and they will be matching your Big Give donation up to $2,500!
Donate today to prevent suicide and help our youth live. Remember, your gift will be going twice as far thanks to the F&M Bank match!
The Life Center
The Life Center served 36 individuals diagnosed with severe persistent mental illness and/or substance abuse issues in the past year. Our goal for this funding is to assist these individuals with their recovery in a safe haven and provide them with alternative therapies to improve their mood. All of these individuals have been in traditional mental health counseling or talk therapy for years. We are requesting funding for the Circles Program, an alternative therapies approach which is often not available for those who struggle with severe mental illness due to cost. By providing yoga therapy, art therapy, YMCA group membership, and dietary education, individuals will be able to continue to experience these alternative approaches that they have experienced over the past year. Since the program started in March 2018, the individuals at The Life Center have completed the evidence based DSM-5 Cross Cutting Screening weekly. The screening measures overall mood and health. The overall results were significant and showed an 82% improvement in their overall health and mood in the course of 16 weeks. We would like to continue these alternative therapies to maintain or further improve the individuals overall mental health and well-being.
Heartland's School Based Mental Health Counseling
Heartland Counseling Services, Inc.
Heartland Counseling Services, Inc.'s School Based Mental Health Counseling Program, called The Mariposa Project, is unique in that it is the only program in Northern Nebraska that offers mental health and substance abuse counseling in the school districts of Bancroft-Rosalie, Homer, Emerson-Hubbard, Oakland-Craig, Macy, Pender, Ponca, O’Neill, Lyons-Decatur, Wakefield, and community locations to anyone, regardless of their ability to pay.
A healthy student has a better chance to develop skills, learn and succeed in school. Unfortunately, many students come to school with emotional and behavioral health challenges affecting their academic performance and overall health. Most often, the lack of available services in the community, the inability to pay for treatment, and the limited amount of mental health services covered through insurance places a strain on the schools and forces teachers and administrators to provide behavioral health support. By having a licensed mental health practitioner from Heartland in the schools, it relieves some strain on the school personnel and allows the students the help they need. The program's model helps remove any barriers that might prevent someone from accessing confidential mental health counseling.
Students who are uninsured or underinsured are never turned away. Mental health practitioners are available to meet immediately with students in a school based setting convenient for the student. There are no delays, denials of, or approval from insurance companies for mental health care - the program's priority is to provide the care the student needs. Our mission is provide quality mental health services to anyone in our community, as well as, working with community partners; this program is exactly that.