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Precaution

This website is not to be considered medical advice under any circumstances.

If you, or anyone you know, are experiencing suicidal ideations, please visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention

Introduction

This toolkit exists to make freely available and accessible the theory, practical implementation guidelines, and most prominent research in the field of Social Network Health.

For anyone who wants to use a Social Network Health approach to improve the health of their community, this toolkit will provide the essential theory, which should be understood first, and basic implementation information to provide enough of the scope and precautionary information to evaluate training materials.

Use the major sections below to navigate, and please read through the context section below if you are ever in doubt of the context of this toolkit. We are easy to reach.

Major Sections

Sections

The Major Sections of this toolkit can be navigated via the hamburger menu:

• Theory - The Key Findings in Social Network Health and their context.
• Practical Implementation - The fundamentals of practical implementation of a social network health approach.
• Research Library - TBD Primary resources, seminal research, educational video explainers, and links to external resources.

Context

Project Status

The current status of this Toolkit is: Alpha

That means we are testing this Toolkit and seeking peer review. This toolkit should currently be useful, informative, and not misleading, but should not be relied upon alone to evaluate an approach, training system, or program.

What we have done to date:

• We have enumerated the key findings in theory, and added references and video support for each.
• We have enumerated the basic precautions and scope of practical implementation
• We have filmed and interviewed the most prominent research team in the field, and dozens of school administrators, teachers, counselors, students and education professionals. And we're just getting started. Less than 1% of that material has been added here to date - so we have a lot to do and a lot to learn and we'll be adding content regularly as time goes on.

History

This project was conceived in 2021 to document successful implementations in Social Network Health. The Social Network Health project has been filming teachers, students, administrators, counselors, researchers and others since early 2022 - that is ongoing as of this writing. In the process, we have collected research and observed common language, practices, and wisdom that is best compiled and presented in this living, mixed media format. We will be launching the first useful release of this site in 2024.

To learn more about the team, mission, and values of the Social Network Health Project, see the about page on our main website.

Non-commercial

Note that this is a charitable, non-commercial project - you can't buy anything here and we won't recommend anything for purchase, but we will profile materials and training professionals on our main site.

Active Research

The Network Health Approach describes tools and methods that are under active study, development, and use.

This means that this toolkit will be updated as new research dictates, and, most importantly the version history will reflect changes accurately.

To ensure that you have the latest information, you can check the most recent update date on any page in this wiki, view and read the full version history, see when it was last peer-reviewed, sign up for updates to this toolkit, join our discussion group, and apply to become an editor.

We will update this with new research as it develops.  We have a research page where new contexts in which these tools can be used will be described as the tools are applied, researched, and tested within them.

Schools First

Throughout this toolkit, we will typically assume the context of a school.  We are focused on helping there because the need for preventative solutions and research is strong.  However, this approach has been proven effective in other contexts such as in the United States Air Force, Police departments, and other contexts you can learn more about on the research page.

Schools are a priority because of their vulnerable, high-potential populations, but also because they have become community hubs and therefore the second and third places in the terminology of Oldenburg. Their increasing importance in modern society as community infrastructure warrants our full attention. Schools can even pull family (the first place) into community by organizing family oriented activities and relationship building.

Universality of the Approach

We believe that a Social Network Health approach that is universally useful for all communities can be defined, but it will look nothing like the implementation of what is commonly known as a "program".

Programs are developed from approaches and ideally should dissolve into strong culture values and practices. Ecological validity is one finding of Social Network Health research that demands that a program is developed specifically and uniquely for a community - that’s what makes an approach so broadly applicable. This contention is supported by researched implementation across a breadth of communities. A network health approach to preventative care attempts to make individual and community protective factors and social norms a part of everyday culture.  Network health approaches that address these processes and can only maintain their universality if they are co-implemented by the community they are developed in.

Historical Context

The history of preventative mental health care is beyond the scope of this wiki, but it is worth arguing that the characteristics of Social Network Health approaches differ from how mental health has been approached in modern societies most of the world over for the last 100 years, but they are not that different from what existed and still does exist in most cultures in the more distant past. The fact that research has taken humanity full circle to rediscovered excellence is notable and in some cases relevant. Some discussion of this is relevant to understanding practical implementation roadblocks, so this history is expanded on in the implementation page.

Medical Model v. Strengths model

We are attempting to outline Social Network Health in the context of what we call a "strengths model". The "medical model" of care requires identification of a weakness to begin recommending treatment. In mental health care, some issues have no strong correlates that can be identified as weaknesses early on. Interestingly, there are correlates that can be identified as risk factors in communities that are much stronger indicators of future risk, and more readily identifiable, than individual risk factors.[citation needed] In some cases, strengths-based models that seek to identify strengths of individuals and communities have been shown to be more effective in reducing risk factors than a weakness-based medical model. Treating a community preventatively withy a strengths based-model can also be done without isolating individuals as weak links, separating them from connections. Instead, a strengths based preventative care program identifies strengths and integrates individuals into broader communities.