Teen Y Mind is a mental wellness program for youth ages 13 to 18 that teaches tools for managing anxiety, stress, and other difficult emotions:
- free dinner provided every week
- end of program outing that we will decide as a group
- meet like-minded youth
- learn more about yourself and what coping strategies work for you!
Learn more about when Y Mind is being offered in West Vancouver by contacting Lauren Odile Pinkney.
Upcoming Y Mind
Contact Lauren Odile Pinkney to get started.
More information
The West Vancouver Youth Services team has started a wonderful partnership with the YMCA to offer Teen Y Mind in West Vancouver.
Y Mind Teen is a free seven-week mental wellness program delivered across BC. This program supports teens ages 13 to 18 who are experiencing symptoms of anxiety to learn and practice evidence-based strategies to cope with stress and anxiety. The topics in the program are derived directly from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
The West Vancouver Y Mind Teen is led by trained mental health professionals and gives teens the chance to connect with others who are experiencing similar thoughts and feelings.
In the seven weeks, the guiding principles of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) will be broken up this way:
Session 1: Joining the Journey
Reflect on the experience of anxiety, specifically on your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. Break anxiety down to encourage curiosity and self-reflection of thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations to support your ability to try the mindfulness skills in the following sessions.
Session 2: Connecting with the Present Moment
Understand how your mind and body work when they are in danger or perceived danger—both of which present similarly to anxiety. With a focus on past and future thoughts that can dominate your mind, this session supports the practice of connecting with the present moment as a tool for coping with symptoms of anxiety.
Session 3: Practicing Acceptance
Cultivate a greater awareness of how you might avoid and/or control your inner experiences in a valid attempt to relieve yourself from distress, discomfort, and pain. This session introduces “acceptance of our inner experiences” as a tool for symptoms of anxiety.
Session 4: Practicing Willingness
Grow your awareness of the pain that comes when we struggle with distressing or painful thoughts and emotions. In this session, you will be introduced to “willingness” as a tool for symptoms of anxiety.
Session 5: Learning to Unhook from Thoughts
Build self-awareness around fusing to thoughts and learn how to unhook (diffuse) from these thoughts. In this session, you will be introduced to "Unhooking" as a tool for symptoms of anxiety.
Session 6: What is Important to You?
Gain support in identifying what you value and that can guide your actions. Learn about the concept of values as a way to support following through with real-life decisions, even while experiencing unpleasant thoughts, emotions, and/or physical sensations.
Session 7: Reviewing the Journey
Reflect on your seven-week journey and integrate your learning on mindfulness, acceptance, willingness, diffusion, values, and committed action and how these strategies can be used to cope with stress, worry, and anxiety.
McCreary Centre Society is continually collecting data on the efficacy of this program. While running this program, we will ask youth for their voluntary consent in completing a pre-program and post-program survey. The survey asks questions about their current levels of stress and anxiety in different aspects of their life. The youth are given ID codes in place of their names, to ensure anonymity. We explain to youth that the benefit of their participation is that they help further enhance the development of the Teen Y-Mind program, and by request, they can view their two surveys at the end of the program and track their progress!
All inquiries may be directed to Lauren Odile Pinkney.
