Timeline

What We Have Done

During the month of January, we brainstormed ideas on how we can effectively inform our high school peers on the protective and risk factors of panic attacks to bring up with our to-be mental health consultant (MCH). At first, we reached out to a counselor to be our MCH, however, she was unable to be our MCH due to her tight schedule. Instead, she gave us a list of people in our school that could potentially help us. We quickly noticed a specific counselor that we believed could help us out the most, our school's social worker, Ms. Aisha Calhoun. Once Ms. Calhoun agreed to become our MCH, we quickly got to work. By the end of the month, we met with our MCH and we planned out what we were going to do for the month of February.

During the month of February, we started posting on our social media pages on TikTok and Instagram while also planning out dates of when to schedule the recording of our podcasts as well as the release dates. We hosted 16 consecutive days of posting regarding the risk factors and protective factors that were mentioned in our research. We went in order by the number of people that said they relate to that certain factor because we wanted to appeal to popular factors and then factors not as prominent but still had an effect on people. We had a 12-day of Anti-Stress Tactics calendar where we prompted our peers to follow some activities that can act as protective factors for panic attacks. More information regarding this 12-day calendar can be found on the Anti-Stress Tactics Calendar page of the website.

We wanted to impact our peers and make them feel okay about having certain issues and we wanted to educate others about it.  We collaborated with many peers and asked for their input on our project, taking it into account. We also collaborated with our HOSA advisor and the Assistant Principal 'Project It's Okay Not To Feel Okay'. We posted daily on our Instagram account making sure to give constant information regarding the topics that many of our peers are going through. We took our time on the other accounts as we tried to make videos on TikTok which took a lot of editing, as well as editing the Podcast that we recorded. Our first post was decided due to the competitive environment at our school and how our school's students strive for better grades due to competitiveness which leads to tremendous academic stress for everyone. During the months of April and May we continued to spread awareness. We conducted two projects during May including a mindfulness activity through stretching and yoga and de-stressing. We also had a project where we increased awareness by informing others through pamphlets. We conducted a project in May in honor of the upcoming AP exams by giving out stress balls to students who were about to take the exam.

Our Next Steps

We are planning to further our outreach and expand our target population to middle school students. The education of risk and protective factors could help prepare these students for what is to come in high school. We want to teach them effective ways to destress and relax in order to prevent risk factors while also not creating fear within them for what is to come.

We plan to hold another podcast with more guest speakers. This will offer more viewpoints on our risk and protective factors and what their experiences are with patients. We will also expand the topic of our podcast episodes to align with the needs of our peers and listeners by allowing them to send in discussion questions. We will have a professional with us to help advise these listeners.

We are planning a visit to Atrium Health Levine Children's Center in Charlotte, NC to reinforce protective factors of destressing activities and provide it for these children who go through tremendous stress every day. We plan to host this visit during the summer so we can engage in fun activities with students. The main goal of the project is to offer a fun way for the children to participate in activities for which they can destress.