Allie Harris

Project Portfolio Description

Ophelia’s Place is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing support for adolescent girls ages 10-18 through Middle and High School empowerment curriculum, After and Out of School services, and strength-based therapy services. Many adolescents cannot afford to seek therapy or be awarded an official diagnosis, and many of the adolescent girls that seek our services come from low-income backgrounds. The Mental Health Resource Guide provides easy access for girls to receive guidance or information to help manage anxiety, depression, and their mental health, as it will be free to access. It contains an explanation of mental health and mental illness, a brief description of the negative stigma attached to mental illness, a section on warning signs to anxiety and depression, coping strategies supported by research to manage these symptoms, and information regarding how stress interferes with these symptoms. It also promotes healthy ways to intervene when a loved one is affected.

The results of this Mental Health Resource Guide for adolescents led to growth in the mental health of adolescent girls, community in the recommended resources given, and an increase in materials that promote mental health education that will help foster outside supportive environments for girls. For future use it is recommended that the website be updated by Ophelia’s Place Staff and their Public Relations Specialist to include updated content each year as more developments in the field of mental health research get published, such as new updates to the DSM-5. More research on anxiety and depression among adolescents will continue to grow as the country distributes more vaccines on a yearly basis which in turn will provide more opportunities to expand in person recruitment for research studies involving adolescent participants.