Theory

Key Findings in Social Network Health

We will outline the key findings in Social Network Health that define the implementations we have studied. The findings are critical to developing a mature approach to health in a community using Social Network Health.

Among the key findings, we currently identify ten that necessitate specific actions to achieve the outcomes of four key findings by which community health can be measured. The number of key findings we describe may change as further research and implementation reveal new insights over time.

In general, we know that in practice, in school contexts, all 14 of these findings are heavily relied upon, but in some other contexts, some of these findings are not ecologically valid, and not used.

Key Action Findings:

Prevention: 

Effective and efficient Prevention builds individual and community protective factors and social norms.  Network health approaches that address these processes, such as maximizing youth-adult connections school-wide, heightening influence of youth with coping, and creating protective schools.  

Dive in: Prioritizing Prevention

Ecological Validity:

Approaches that are designed and built by and with the community (authenticity, organic, grassroots, culturally relevant) have higher transfers of beliefs and skills to daily life.  A "program" that is transferred from one environment to another is not a valid Social Network Health approach, and is unlikely to address the cultural norms of the new environment.

Dive in: Ecological Validity

Evidence-Based Methodology:

Social Network Health approaches require an ongoing commitment to follow documented evidence of impact by studying research and implementation in the field of preventative mental health care.

Dive in: Evidence-Based Methodology

Consistency: 

Social Network Approaches require long-term commitment to intentional cultural integration, relationship and skill building, and re-evaluation and modification of programming over time. It is, unfortunately, rare to find training and mentors that regularly interact deeply with communities over years to build a consistent program and genuinely change culture.

Dive in: Consistency

Discovery:

Discovering how ones personal strengths are viewed by the group, and the discovery of other’s strengths and how those strengths impact oneself and the social network is a powerful experience.  When everyone’s competencies are recognized, the group is aware of it's collective strengths and the value of all members.

Dive in: Discovery

Whole Community: 

We maximize the impact of a Social Network Health approach when everyone in the community is invited and contributes to the overall health of the social network.  Involving as much of the community as possible contributes to efficiency (using the community instead of outsiders), co-creation (ecological validity), discovery of strengths, and many other endemic principles and practices of Social Network Health.

Dive in: Whole Community

Peer Influence:

Peer influenced or peer-peer activities promote relationships between peers, and engage people in their existing communities, leveraging their existing relationships and common interests, while enhancing their knowledge of one another and their potential within their community.

Dive in: Peer Influence

Notes:

We might want to change this to: Social Leverage

"leveraging social influences to prevent emerging risk"

The argument against social leverage is that it doesn't itself communicate that relationships between peers are the practical core of the idea, here.

Mentoring: 

Mentoring is a practice and a skillset that supports others through listening, sharing and connecting. In a school context, mentors are selected by staff and maintain a pseudo-counselor relationship between peers. This is a feature of social network health approaches in schools, but not always in other contexts.

Dive in: Mentoring

Active Learning:

High-energy activities maintain interest, motivation, and create shared positive emotional experiences and create norms that incentivize adaptive coping skills.  Space is created to practice skills that grow healthy bonds and draw upon resources in social environments to meet goals, manage career and personal challenges, and prevent behavioral health problems.

Dive in: Active Learning

Notes: We are preferring Active Learning to experiential learning because it's a more modern and recognizable term and it is more common to find the term in supporting evidence.

Personally Meaningful Sharing:

Participants are invited to share personally relevant goals, values, and experiences as a Social Network Health approach evolves, drawing upon real life strengths and conversations as a way to teach, discover, understand one another. 

Dive in: Deep Conversations

Key Outcome Findings:

Group Cohesion:

Group Cohesion is an outcome that results in kinship between peers. An environment in which integrated youth-adult networks share in experiential learning and maximize protective bonds can ultimately result in strong group cohesion as measured by personal sharing and peers naming each other as trusted friends.

Dive in: Group Cohesion

Connection to Guidance:

Connection to Guidance is the connection with a mentor, a trusted adult or person of guidance provides a protective bond that encourages help-seeking behaviors.

Dive in: Connection to Guidance

Belonging:

A sense of Belonging is the feeling of being accepted, valued, and connected within a community or group.

Dive in: Belonging

Help Seeking:

Help seeking behaviors are actions taken by individuals to seek assistance or resources to address potential or existing mental health concerns before they become more severe.

Dive in: Help Seeking

Commentary on Key Findings:

A key result from meta analysis is that although many factors are believed to increase the risk of developing a mental health condition, but focusing on treatment those factors is not the most efficient way to reduce the prevalence of mental health conditions. [citation required]

Instead, building protective factors across a community, resulting in a widespread sense of belonging seems to be extremely effective in reducing the risk of mental health conditions.

Individuals who feel a sense of belonging in their community have the sklls and environment they need to become more involved and to actively seek the help they need.

To make that happen in a community (a school environment, for example), the school community must develop group cohesion.  Group cohesion is created from strong, healthy connections between student peers and between students and trusted adult guides throughout the community.

To engage with one another optimally, a community must discover the strengths of individuals and groups.  Discovery must be practiced and developed as a skill.  Active learning and heavily peer-influenced activities and initiatives have been show to be effective as part of a methodology to kick-start discovery and ultimately lead to deep conversations, which are the most powerful method of learning and bonding in social networks.

When a whole school community is cohesive, and has strong, healthy connections throughout, it’s members become more activated, more engaged, and more energized.  The time spent building healthy connections is repaid manyfold by a reduction in suicide, pruning and disciplinary incidents, by an increase in attendance and performance, and by an emotionally recharged community that spends the bulk of their time working preventatively, instead of performing interventions after disruptive and damaging incidents.

The makeup of a healthy school environment is unique to every school.  A healthy school environment cannot be duplicated by simply following a written manual or video series and/or taking a one-time training - rather, such an environment is built by developing ecologically valid skills and practices that are unique to each community.  These skills and practices become cultural norms that are developed across years of consistency of practice.

Defining the Social Network Health Approach within an integrated system of care:

This toolkit describes the Social Network Health Approach to preventative mental health care, drawing on published research from the University of Rochester Center for the Study and Prevention of Suicide and from the implementations by preventative mental health care professionals in close cooperation with them.

Preventative care is only one category of care within a holistic integrated system of mental health care.  Simplistically and fundamentally, it is critically important to address both Preventative and Emergency care within an integrated system.  Preventative care is clearly preferable, when effective, to emergency care when the risk of suicide is in play.