Trainings on Mental Health Awareness for Restaurants, Food As Medicine, Healthy Eating on a Budget and more
Workshops on Gardening As Healer, Mindful Eating and more
MHANYS Mental Health Community Partner
Our training and workshops fall under two classifications: Brain Food Garden Project Presents or BFGP Presents: Feeding Our Mental Health. Under the Brain Food Garden Project Presents label, we offer a wide variety of Mental Health peer-related recovery and advocacy topics. Our most recent workshops under this label have been Peer Leadership Through Public Speaking: Using Your Voice to Support Your Community & Create Positive Change a two-hour workshop created for the Urban Justice Center's Systems Advocacy 10-week program. Self-Advocacy Understanding the Power of Your Own Voice, and Red, White, Blue, and YOU: Understanding When to Vote, What You Believe In, and Your Rights both created for Baltic Street AEH, Inc. Also, under this label, we offer the first-of-its-kind training to restaurant professionals, management, and line staff, Pressure Cooker: How to Keep Your Restaurant Staff from Burning Out by Creating Sound Behavioral Health Practices and Tools.
Under the BFGP Presents: Feeding Our Mental Health label, we develop community and behavioral health peer-centric training related to Brain Food Garden Projects’ mission statement: "To promote constructive and person-centered conversations in the mental health community and beyond, regarding mindful eating and gardening as viable and important tools for behavioral health recovery." Our first training under this label was a six-hour training for the Community Access peer training program Howie the Harp Advocacy Center titled Food Justice, Food as Medicine, Shopping & Budgeting for Mindful Eating. Also, two workshops are currently in development for InUnity Alliance formerly known as The Coalition for Behavioral Health, 2025 Fiscal Year.
The smells, colors, and handling of soil by patients during horticulture activities may be particularly important and can improve life satisfaction, well-being, and self-concept in mentally ill patients. [Perrins-Margalis, N.M. Schepis, J. Rugletic, H. Stepanski, and M. Walsh. 2000. The Immediate Effects of a Group-Based Horticulture Experience on the Quality of Life of Persons with Chronic Mental Illness. Occupational Therapy in Mental Health. 16, 1:15-32]. In the past decade, research has refocused on the benefits of gardening as a valid and peer-reviewed tool for behavioral health recovery. Founder of not-for-profit Brain Food Garden Project Sean Brennan will facilitate this 90-minute workshop, providing background and history on traditional Horticultural Therapy, the most up-to-date research, and findings on the benefits of gardening for behavioral health, and Brain Food Garden Project’s peer-based model for gardening as a wellness tool.
Learning Objectives:
Karen Washington is opposed to using the expression “food desert,” which she calls “an outsider term” that calls desolate places, rather than places with enormous potential, to mind. She prefers “food apartheid,” which “brings us to the more important question: What are some of the social inequalities that you see, and what are you doing to erase some of the injustices?” [Karen Washington Food Justice Advocate and farmer interviewed by Anna Brones for Guernica Magazine, 2018]. Why does the word “diet” emotionally affect some people the way it does? Why call food-deprived neighborhoods “deserts” instead of addressing the whole food system, race, geography, and economics that create food inequality? The language that we use is important, and in this 90-minute workshop, the founder of the not-for-profit Brain Food Garden Project, Sean Brennan, will provide a context for what is food justice, a history of the food justice movement, and a discussion of the importance of adopting language that will advance discussions around food and its connection to behavioral health.
Learning Objectives:
This program is offered in the format that works best for you don't want to meet us in the garden we will meet you and your family: in-person, online, or hybrid.
The Mental Health Community Partners Program may be a good fit for you if: