CORONAVIRUS (COVID-19) RESOURCE CENTER Read More
Add To Favorites

LiveWell hosts 'Thrive' training

Fergus Falls Daily Journal - 9/5/2018

Sept. 05--Hoping to provide simple, yet effective tools for Otter Tail County, LiveWell, a subcommittee of Forward Fergus Falls, is looking to improve the state of mental health in the community.

Natalie Knutson and Jason Bergstrand are co-leading mental health resilience training, "Thrive" Sept. 25 at M State's Legacy Hall from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. There will be a meal included and the event is no cost. Trainers for the event will be Dr. Corey Martin and Dr. Christy Secor. They will present simple tools to "learn how you can incorporate proven resiliency tools into the lives of students, families, individuals, and businesses," according to a flyer about the Thrive initiative. There is a limit of 150 seats.

Bergstrand, community wellness assistant at Lake Region and manager at PartnerSHIP4Health has been to a couple of the trainings led by Martin and Cristy through their "Bounce Back" initiative that began in Buffalo. Knuston works at the Lake Region Healthcare Mehl Center and is the community wellness director at Lake Region. After a community health needs assessment was done by Lake Region Healthcare and Otter Tail County Public Health, improving lifestyle behaviors and mental health in the community became a priority. "We as an organization, LiveWell Fergus Falls, decided we probably need to do something as a community," said Bergstrand.

The event is, "underwritten by Lake Region Healthcare Foundation and then under the hospice of LiveWell Fergus Falls," Bergstrand said. Although there is a limited amount of seats available, Knutson and Bergstrand hope to reach as many people as possible.

"The goal is really to have people there who not only want to apply this to themselves but also be an agent of change in the organizations that they belong to," Bergstrand said.

Though the skills being shared seem quite simple at first glance, "the tools that are provided are research-based. There's evidence behind the practice of them," Knutson said. "The science shows some very promising outcomes that if you were to do these tools on an ongoing basis there is a dramatic uptick in your mental health and resiliency and a dramatic downtick in depression, for instance," Bergstrand said.

Connected all aspects of health is the focus of the event. "The four main links are nutrition, sleep, physical activity and mental health," Knutson said. Both co-leaders hope this training will add to what groups in the community are already doing. "There are groups in the community that work on physical health and there are groups that work on mental health, but probably not together," Bergstrand said.

Looking beyond the training, Lake Region Healthcare will be launching their community health challenge called LiveWell. "A component to the challenge each month will be related to Thrive," Knutson said. They encourage the community to visit lrhc.org for more information to continue the work of improving mental health in the community. "The training is not the end. The training is the beginning," Bergstrand said.

To register for the event, visit eventbrite.com/e/thrive-tickets-47917117388. There is a limit of 150 seats. For more information, contact Jason Bergstrand at jason.bergstand@co.clay.mn.us or Natalie Knutson at nknutson@lrhc.org. For those interested in what will be presented, Bergstrand and Knutson suggest visiting the Bounce Back initiative website, www.bouncebackproject.org.

___

(c)2018 the Fergus Falls Daily Journal (Fergus Falls, Minn.)

Visit the Fergus Falls Daily Journal (Fergus Falls, Minn.) at www.fergusfallsjournal.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.