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A new, free online resource has been introduced to San Benito County called CredibleMind. The platform offers videos, articles and podcasts on various mental health topics. The site aims to make mental health resources more accessible countywide.
Genessis Smith, program coordinator and health education associate for Public Health Services, described CredibleMind as “YouTube, Spotify and online articles combined, but focused on mental health and well-being, with content that has been carefully reviewed for quality and credibility.”
The county has a one-year contract with CredibleMind, which became officially accessible to the public on June 15. The platform is funded by a grant from the Central California Alliance for Health. However, the grant funding has expired and in order to keep funding CredibleMind past the initial contract, San Benito Public Health Services would need to reapply for a grant, Smith said.
The platform addresses a number of different mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and PTSD as well as more general topics such as stress, workplace wellness and self-care.
Smith believes CredibleMind has the ability to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health.
“By being a little more understanding about a condition, there’s a chance that someone might be a bit more confident on what to do and where to go when asking for help for themselves,” Smith said.
Louise Coombes, a manager at San Benito County Behavioral Health, compares mental health to physical health.
“Everybody goes and gets their physical health checked on a regular basis as much as they’re able to, so it should be the same for mental health,” she said.
CredibleMind offers a space for people who aren’t in a severe mental health crisis that would require immediate behavioral health intervention, according to Smith.
“I’s for people who might still want to figure out how to better improve themselves, improve their own condition, at the moment,” she said.
Coombes said this was one of the things that attracted San Benito Behavioral Health to CredibleMind initially. She said that because the county is almost 1400 square miles, it might be difficult for people in the southernmost area to make their way to the department’s facility.
CredibleMind “provides a really good, instant kind of resource to be able to look some things up, do some mindfulness exercises to calm themselves down without necessarily having to rush over here to call our crisis services,” Coombes said.
Smith said that if Public Health Services sees that the community is receptive to the platform then they can use that information to reapply for a grant that would keep CredibleMind accessible countywide.
Geraldine Arce, a staff analyst for Behavioral Health and soon to be Coombes’s successor, hopes CredibleMind will lead people to seek out other resources from Behavioral Health and Public Health Services.
“Hopefully,” she said, “it’ll pique curiosity, so then from there it opens up to, ‘oh, what else might be available through the county or in our community?’”
The BenitoLink Internship Program is a paid, skill-building program that prepares local youth for a professional career. This program is supported by Monterey Peninsula Foundation AT&T Golf Tour and Taylor Farms.
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