Lincoln Park to Hold Family Event for Mental Health Awareness

MIDLAND (March 11, 2024) Mental health professionals from several local organizations will visit Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School for a Parent/Guardian Information Night on Wednesday, March 13.

The special, free evening event for the families of Lincoln Park students will be held on campus in the Black Box theater at 6 p.m. Wednesday. The event will be moderated by Elisia Majors, the deputy mental health administrator of Beaver County Behavioral Health services.

The goal of the evening is to share information and resources with Lincoln Park families, including strategies to recognize and respond to mental health challenges.

“We recognize that we have a responsibility to educate our community about the impor- tance of mental health,” said P.K. Poling, Lincoln Park’s CEO. “So we wanted to bring in representatives from a variety of mental health organizations to meet with our families.”

Poling noted that, according to the National Institutes of Health, nearly 20 percent of Ameri- cans aged 3 to 17 have some sort of mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral dis- order.

“With numbers like these, it’s critical that we help our students, parents, and guardians—as well as our staff—to learn more about mental health issues,” Poling added.

Presenters at Wednesday’s Parent/Guardian Information Night will include representatives from The Caring Place and the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Other organizations involved will include MHY Family Services, Pressley Ridge, UPMC, the Beaver County Zero Suicide Initiative, Nicolina’s Wishes, the Beaver County Youth Ambassador Program, PFLAG, the Prevention Network, and the National Alliance for Mental Illness.

Many of these organizations will host resource tables Wednesday. There will also be private meeting rooms available for one-on-one debriefing with grief counselors and support spe- cialists, and therapy dogs will be available as well.

In addition, Dr. Rachel Book, a member of Lincoln Park’s board of directors, will share plans about dealing with the many problems of social media, and protecting students from its harmful effects.

For more information about the Parent/Guardian Information Night, or about Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School, please call (724) 643-9004, or email info@lppacs.org.