Programming News From Counseling, Prevention Education, and Economic Empowerment

Read this article and more in the Northern Star 2025 Newsletter!

Counseling and Therapy News: Out and About!

Museum Visits

Crisis Center North brought a number of clients to Pittsburgh museums through a partnership with the Carnegie Museum group. Clients accompanied CCN counselors on July 25th at the Carnegie history museum and August 15th at the Warhol Museum. 

Clients described the experience as highly engaging, highly informative, transformative, and uplifting. Reflecting on and engaging with the art and exhibits allowed clients and counselors to approach topics that would have felt more painful and difficult in talk therapy alone. Also, these new uplifting experiences are associated with appreciation and a place of healing, forging new healthy pathways in the brain.

CCN’s  goal is to hold one unique museum session per month; our next stop is the Carnegie Science Center!

Equine Therapy

This year’s equine therapy took place at Bella Terra Stables. Equine therapy participants connected with the animals in a profound way. The horses’ empathetic behavior and calming presence beneficially affected participants’ nervous systems and helped regulate their heart rate, breathing, and stress responses. Equine calm activates the parasympathetic nervous system of those who interact with them, lowering anxiety and hyper vigilance, fostering mindfulness and reducing intrusive thoughts and increases attunement to their own bodies. Guiding the horses, clients reported feelings of agency and competence, which were followed by feelings of empowerment and self-esteem.

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Prevention Education News from the Community

During the 2024-25 school year, our prevention education programming has grown by leaps and bounds! Not only has our Coaching Boys into Men (CBIM) and Challenging Athletes to become Lifelong Leaders (CALL) programs evolved to be more relevant to today’s student athletes and the challenges they face, we have also developed new programming to reach new audiences. In the middle of the school year, we were approached by third grade teachers who were having some trouble with kids being bullied and bringing their home lives to school, unable to focus and often having behavior issues with classmates. We were able to combine parts of our middle school curriculum about healthy relationships with our high school mentoring program and came up with a brand-new “Friendship, Communication, and Respect” program. During our sessions with third graders, PE educator Brett spent one class period working on activities and discussing positive and negative friendship traits, how to be a good friend, how to stick up for what you need, how we communicate with and without words, and how to be respectful of our peers and teachers, especially about creating boundaries. A few days after he presented, high school mentors came to the elementary school to work with third graders in completing activities based on the big ideas discussed earlier. The third-grade teachers noticed a big difference in attendance, behavior, and academics after our sessions, especially leading up to the high school mentors joining them. The high school students appreciated working with the third graders and gave them a chance to be leaders. The success of this new program is increasing our reach and will be adopted by at least one other school during the 2025-26 school year.

Also, based on the new “Friendship, Communication, and Respect” program, we designed single presentations to 1^st-8^th grade summer camp students in Manchester. The students at the camp come from underserved backgrounds and often have seen violence in and out of their homes. We were able to speak with each grade-level independently about friendship, communication, and respect. The students were engaged and excited to talk about their personal lives and how to safely handle difficult situations with their friends and in their homes. For the first time ever, we were able to reach first graders through fourth graders and we look forward to working with these younger ages again.

Economic Empowerment: Rebuilding Lives and Livelihoods By Restoring Economic Power

Clients who are rebuilding their lives need the tools and materials to do so, and YOU can help!

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Client Needs currently include:

Cleaning supplies, toothbrushes, toothpaste, razors, shaving cream, lotion, shampoo, conditioner, body wash, hand soap, toilet paper, paper towels, laundry detergent. 

No clothing or used items, please. However, clothing donations can be directed to Treasure House Fashions.

CCN’s Holiday Toy Drive will take place on December 11th and 12th of this year, and here’s what YOU can do to help!