January 28, 2008 - Reach Out with Marianas Trench is the newest game and mind tool created by mindyourmind.ca, answering these questions and many more. Hosted by Canadian pop-punk band, Marianas Trench, our rendition of Jeopardy, provides youth with a variety of mental health information.

Categories range from ‘Signs or Symptoms’ of mental health disorders to ‘Celeb Extravaganza’, showcasing how mental health is ingrained in our everyday contemporary culture. Other categories are ‘Smells Like Teen Lyrics’, in which the lyrics to songs are related to mental health; ‘Dodgy Topics’ discusses risky behaviours and things that are usually hard to talk about, such as suicide; and ‘Trick or Fact’ dispels myths with actual stats and facts, such as:

• What exactly is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
• What do you do if your friend washes their hands 6 times an hour and they are cracking and bleeding?
• How often does someone commit suicide around the world?
• Who sang, “I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel, I focus on the pain, the only thing that’s real”?
• What do Mary-Kate Olsen, Princess Diana and Alanis Morissette all have in common?

The game, revised from previous versions with the help of youth volunteers, is not only available online, but is also projected in presentations by mindyourmind.ca to youth in classrooms, hospitals, group homes, and many other settings. It can be played online by 1 person or in groups of up to 4 teams. Feedback received on the game so far by youth that have experienced presentations, is very promising, with 97% saying they learned something new about mental health and 89% feeling better able to help themselves during a hard time; 100% found it informative and educational. With Reach Out with Marianas Trench, mental health awareness increases, while stigma decreases.

Josh Ramsay, lead singer of Marianas Trench notes, “I wanted to become involved with the game because, as someone who has had a past struggling with certain mental diseases myself - with drug addiction and eating disorders - I think that the standard perception and paradigm of mental diseases and illnesses is not really looked at the right way. I think that the less we talk about things the more power it gives them over you. I think it's important to have stuff like this where people can have a common place to talk about it”.

This collaboration between mindyourmind.ca and Marianas Trench is made possible through the generosity of London Community Foundation. A leader in community development, innovative granting, and endowment building, London Community Foundation is a public foundation serving donors and charities primarily in London and Middlesex County since 1979.