Talk on happiness opens 2018 KidStrong Conference

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — A conference with information about mental health, substance abuse, trafficking and trauma among West Virginia kids opened with a little bit of happiness in the Capital City.

Dr. Jim Harris, associate director of training at the West Virginia Autism Training Center at Marshall University, focused on the traits of happier people during his Thursday keynote address to start the 15th KidStrong Conference at the Charleston Civic Center.

“I think we need to have a more thoughtful conversation around positive emotion,” he said.

“Not just disease, disorder and what goes wrong and how to diagnose it, but what do we need to know about people who thrive in spite of difficult circumstances?”

Hundreds of school personnel from across the Mountain State along with school-based health center staff, state and public health workers and others were attending the 2018 KidStrong Conference which was scheduled to run through Friday.

It was billed as West Virginia’s largest school health conference offering information, insights and resources “to address today’s challenges.”

Topics to be covered included substance abuse prevention, mental health supports, safe and supportive schools, school nursing, school-based health, oral health, school counseling, nutrition, physical education, teacher physical activity and reproductive health.

There were also immunization clinics being offered.

Mellisa Bonner, an assistant with the Tucker County Family Resource Network, was interested in the sessions on mental health, specifically because of the challenges her own son has faced.

For those living in Tucker County, “There’s very limited help for the mental health section of taking care of children. There’s not very many qualified people to care for those situations and I really want to know what we can do in the school systems,” Bonner said.

In his opening presentation, Harris pointed to research out of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University that’s shown three common characteristics in people with possible emotions:

– maintenance of deep in-person social networks,
– higher levels of “rational optimism,”
– and views of stress as growth, a pathway to what’s next.

He asked, “Why aren’t we talking about this stuff more? Especially in West Virginia where all you hear from a lot of outlets that we receive information from is all the disease, disorder and despair that our state exists in.”

“Through all my training, I learned all kinds of things about disease and disorder, but very little about human thriving and I don’t think that’s as much as part of the conversation as it should be,” Harris said.





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