The Healthy Thinking Initiative
The Healthy Thinking Initiative is a program for the prevention of depression, teaching evidence-based healthy thinking skills in the workplace. Resilience develops skills that reduce anxiety, a precursor to depression. Optimism has been shown to prevent depression. Mindfulness reduces relapse rates by 60% and reduces need for continued anti-depressant use.
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
John
Last Name
Weaver
Website URL
Country
United States
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
The Healthy Thinking Initiative
Organization Website
Organization Phone
(262) 544-6486
Organization Address
2717 N. Grandview Blvd. #303 Waukesha, WI
Organization Country
United States
Is your organization a
For‐profit
Your idea
Name Your Project
The Healthy Thinking Initiative
Country your work focuses on
United States
Describe Your Idea
The Healthy Thinking Initiative is a program for the prevention of depression, teaching evidence-based healthy thinking skills in the workplace. Resilience develops skills that reduce anxiety, a precursor to depression. Optimism has been shown to prevent depression. Mindfulness reduces relapse rates by 60% and reduces need for continued anti-depressant use.
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
The Healthy Thinking Initiative is a program for the prevention of depression in the workplace. This cost is the leading health care cost for business but is currently not addressed in most wellness programs.
Our program will address the prevention of depression by offering training programs in healthy thinking skills. The programs can be offered online (which means that it is available to anyone with a telephone and a computer with a broadband internet connection) or onsite in Southeastern Wisconsin.
Resilience addresses the area that most wellness programs touch, the management of high levels of stress. It will help employees develop skills that reduce anxiety, the most common precursor to depression.
Optimism is a skill that has been shown to reduce the incidence of depression in school settings and in individuals who have not previously been diagnosed with depression.
Mindfulness has been shown to reduce relapse rates by 60% and to reduce or eliminate the need for continued anti-depressant use in those who have already been diagnosed with depression. This portion of the program has attracted the most attention from those who have heard about it because of the potential to save on high psychotropic medication costs.
Written Material offers support for ongoing programs including an available book, The Prevention of Depression: A Missing Piece in Wellness, and access to a blog at http://thepreventionofdepression.com.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
We have conducted pilot projects in four sites including educational, health, and manufacturing businesses. In each site there has been a positive response from participants (evaluations greater than 8.5 on a 10 point scale) and from organizational leadership. Our programs have been filled to maximum capacity and more than 90% who participated completed the training. Participants have acquired skills that they have been able to apply within the work environment that have resulted in increased emotional awareness and control. Leaders of the organization have observed these skills being utilized and heard participants using language that indicates that the skills are being internalized in the workplace. We are currently looking to expand the program into additional business settings.
Problem
Depression follows a chronic course and emerges early in life. Prevalence rates have increase ten-fold in the past 50 years. This has a major impact on businesses and is the leading medical cost to businesses according to multiple studies. Healthy thinking skills like mindfulness, optimism and resilience have been shown to reduce depression rates and decrease relapse for those previously diagnosed. This initiative is designed to prevent depression. There are other programs that have focused on early identification and better treatment of those who are depressed. With a focus on prevention, our initiative is appropriate for all staff, with no implication that those who participate might reveal that they have a diagnosable mental disorder (the majority of participants in our programs have not ever had a diagnosis).
Actions
We have presented at conferences with wellness professionals, including the National Wellness Conference, The Art & Science of Health Promotion Conference, and The Wisconsin Wellness Conference. We have also presented for business groups and educational conferences as well. We participate in a variety of professional organizations, including the National Wellness Institute, WELCOA, IDWellness, and others. The director is also chair of the Psychologically Health Workplace committee for the Wisconsin Psychological Association and representative to the American Psychological Association. He has also published a book, “The Prevention of Depression: A Missing Piece in Wellness” and writes a blog at http://www.thepreventionofdepression.com. We have collaborated with several wellness providers within the local community who provide more traditional wellness programming. We have collaborated with a company specializing in Health Risk Assessments to provide an assessment that is specific to mental health.
Results
We expect these actions to increase awareness of the need for addressing emotional wellness, an area often overlooked by traditional wellness programs. It is important to raise this awareness in the business community. The major objection of most business owners has been worry about potential for legal trouble if they offer anything for employees who might have a mental disorder. By addressing the need in a prevention context, this problem is circumvented. It is also necessary to raise awareness within the community of wellness professionals that there are evidence-based skills that can be taught that will improve emotional health. While the health risk appraisals that are currently in use only minimally assess the impact of depression on overall health, it is often one of the top two requests by employees for wellness programming. Wellness professionals often say they do not feel qualified to address this need.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
The major obstacle to success is the lack of awareness, on the part of both business and wellness professionals, of the potential to successfully prevent depression and increase healthy thinking skills.
In the next year (2010) our goal is to continue to raise awareness of the opportunity to prevent depression by: 1) speaking at a minimum of 5 major conferences, including wellness conferences and business gatherings, 2) completing a training manual for wellness professionals to use within the workplace, and 3) extend our program into 4 additional organizations.
In the following year (2011) our goal is 1) to accumulate evidence based research that will lead to publication of the program and results in a peer reviewed journal, in partnership with a university based research program, 2) to work with a minimum of 5 wellness organizations to train the wellness professionals to implement the program using our training manual, and 3) extend our program to an additional 4 organizations for our own professional staff.
In the third year (2012) our goal is 1) to form partnerships with national organizations like the National Wellness Institute and the American Psychological Association to continue to raise awareness of the availability of tools to improve emotional health, 2) to continue to provide support for wellness professionals who are trained to teach healthy thinking skills, and 3) to establish a partnership with software developers to develop computer based programming that will provide broader access to learning healthy thinking skills.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
A team of psychologists with full time clinical practices have developed this program. Currently, because we do not receive any outside funding, no one is able to devote attention to the initiative on a full-time basis. Efforts to make this program successful need to be balanced against the need to make a living in a traditional clinical outpatient setting.
In addition, there is not adequate funding to be able to market the initiative or to provide the business development expertise to expand opportunities. A lack of funds prevents hiring professionals with this expertise to help with these tasks. It will be necessary to have enough financial resources to keep this project viable over the next 3 years.
How many people will your project serve annually?
101‐1000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
More than $4000
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for 1‐5 years
In what country?
United States
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Stress Management & Mental Health Clinic
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
No
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
No
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
No
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
We need to establish a partnership with a University research program, ideally an industrial/organizational psychology training program to study both short-term and long-term effects of these interventions in the business setting. Working with the American Psychological Association and with other state psychological organizations will spur new, innovative ideas for integrating psychological science into the promotion of emotional wellness in practical ways.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
1) We need the time and resources to write and publish the trainer manual for use by wellness professionals who would like to include emotional wellness are part of overall wellness programming.
2) We need to compile and publish outcome data on the outcomes of teaching healthy thinking skills to employee populations, in partnership with a university research group.
3) We need to raise awareness in the business community and among wellness professionals about the ability to influence the prevention of depression by teaching healthy thinking skills.
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you to this innovation?
John Weaver, Psy.D. was attending the state convention of the Society of Human Resource Managers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during September of 2005. One of the breakouts was "How to Present Lifestyle Programs to Your Company." The speaker for this breakout session was talking about establishing wellness programs in the workplace, to reduce costs and increase the health of employees.
He identified the costs of a variety of illnesses. The most expensive cost (70% higher than high blood glucose which ranked second) was depression. But his wellness program did not address depression. In conversation with the speaker, Dr. Weaver asked why depression was not addressed and the speaker replied, "That's because nobody knows what to do." Dr. Weaver thought, "I bet I could figure that out!"
So Dr. Weaver began to look to see who has addressed this important and expensive issue. He could not find any component of any wellness program that taught skills to prevent depression.
That is how his interest in psychological wellness was born. As a psychologist, he knew that we could design a program that would teach these skills. Psychologists have researched the prevention of depression, and many published studies demonstrate that these skills can be learned. After doing a review of the existing research, he selected three evidence-based skills that had demonstrated reductions in rates of depression in long-term studies. The three skills, mindfulness, optimism, and resilience are integrated into a 12 week training course designed for the workplace.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
John Weaver, Psy.D. is a Licensed Psychologist who received his Doctor of Psychology degree from the Wisconsin School of Professional Psychology. He also has a Master of Science degree in Clinical Psychology from Marquette University and a Master of Divinity degree from St. Francis School of Pastoral Ministry.
John designed The Healthy Thinking Initiative and has coordinated the efforts of the development team. He has taught mindfulness to groups and individuals since 1997 and has been engaged in his own mindfulness work since 1972. He is works both as a clinical psychologist and a business consultant with more than 20 years of practical experience with organizations, individuals and groups. He is the author of nine articles for business publications including “Surviving Real World Stress,” “Remedies for Workplace Violence,” and “Failures of a ‘Perfect’ Leader” and he is co-founder and owner of Psychology for Business, bringing applied psychology to business and industry. He is the chair of the Wisconsin Psychological Association Psychologically Healthy Workplace committee. He is on the board of the Wisconsin Psychological Association and is the Business of Practice Network representative to the American Psychological Association. He is an accomplished professional speaker who has delivered more than 50 presentations across the US, and he recently published a new book, "The Prevention of Depression: A Missing Piece in Wellness."
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Through another organization or company
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation email
 | 142 weeks agoJohn Weaver updated this Competition Entry. |
| 143 weeks agoJohn Weaver updated this Competition Entry. |
| 146 weeks agoJohn Weaver submitted this idea. |
