September 14th, 2023 By Slash

#f3mentalbattle

When: Monday September 18, 2023 – Saturday September 23, 2023

Where: COT of your workouts

What: Discuss Mental Health

F3 Louisville created #f3mentalbattle where the goal is to bring awareness to mental health issues that affect everyone, with a particular focus on adult men, where mental illness and suicide is at a crisis level.  For more detail, listen to the F3 Podcast on the topic here.

It is very much encouraged for Qs around MeCa to use it as a theme of your COTs during the week.  There are no specific talking points, but more of a way to express to everyone that it is absolutely OK to bring up the topic of mental health, and then speak however your heart so moves you.  Anything expressed at this time should be regarded as confidential. One of the best things about our brotherhood is the way we continue to build a stronger and stronger environment of trust, support and encouragement for each other.  The hope is something like #f3mentalbattle is another small step towards a stronger brotherhood both physically and emotionally.

After the COT, before you close out the workout, please also use this time to bring awareness to the Mount Afton Challenge on January 13th that our Afton AO hosts each year. This event was started in honor of our brother Amway who we lost to suicide, to help promote mental health awareness and suicide prevention. We use the event to raise money for NAMI Cabarrus (National Alliance on Mental Illness), and in turn, NAMI partners with us in various ways. Two specific ways that NAMI partners with us that are worth considering are

1) They have helped provide referrals to mental health supports and services for brothers who are in need. If we have a brother in need of help beyond what we can offer, we can connect them with our friends at NAMI to help navigate the supports available in our community.

2) NAMI offers us free QPR training which is a mental health equivalent to CPR – it’s designed for non-professionals to detect mental health crises, and empowers them with tools to respond and refer. If your AO would like to host a QPR training, please let us know and we can help coordinate this. More detail here.

Thank you, brothers!

Slash

---