The model

The Women Supporting Women (WSW) program and the Mental Health Ambassador (MHA) program work synergistically and can be used in an integrated manner. As depicted in the diagram, there may be multiple starting points.

Some women may begin by joining a WSW group. Upon completion, many of our WSW graduates are interested in sharing what they have learned with family members, friends, neighbors, co-workers, members of their faith community, etc. The MHA training program can equip these individuals to do just that. Some individuals may have a propensity for this sort of upstream mental health work and enter the model at the MHA training juncture.

Upon completion of the MHA training, persons are ready for work in their communities and able to integrate mental health self-care and prevention conversations (“touches”) into their daily encounters.

In our experience, there are some community members who, after “touches” with the MHA, may wish for a more structured program to promote their mental health. In these cases, it may be effective for the MHA to gather a group of interested women and collaborate with an RN to co-lead a WSW group. Women are more likely to feel comfortable joining a mental health group if they know that the MHA, who is familiar to them, will be at the meetings and functioning as a co-leader. To date, we do not have an evidence base for an analogous model with men.

In our recent research, funded by BlueCross/Blue Shield of Michigan and the Michigan Health Endowment Fund, we generated preliminary data relative to the implementation of the WSW-MHA Model (see Publications).