Capstone Proposal

The Capstone strand I have chosen is a Product.

Title: Nurturing Teenage Mental Health through a website and an Instagram page.

Inquiry Question: How can we create an effective platform to provide teenagers with valuable mental
health support, and coping methods, addressing their unique needs and challenges?

Rationale/Context: I chose this inquiry question because I think mental health disorders are a significant
issue in teenagers today and I think there needs to be more proper sources that teens can go to where
they are able to seek help and support. Some people aren't comfortable with going and talking to a
therapist, so I think having a website and an Instagram page, where people can go to and read different
posts and information to find help, will hopefully help and be more appealing to teenagers.

Background: I have personally struggled with anxiety throughout my life, and I have learned a lot about
it over the years from listening to my parents and therapists help me through it. Talking to someone
doesn’t make my anxiety disappear but the coping methods that I have used will relieve my anxiety for a
little while and help me feel better during a hard situation or moment. I also have friends and close
family members, such as my mom, who struggles with depression, and I have seen how it affects them
and what they do to calm down.

Career Connections: I’m not quite sure what I want to do for a living yet, but so far, I know I want to do
something involving psychology and social work, because I want a job that helps others on a daily basis. I
want to be able to make a difference in some people’s lives and help to improve the things that they
struggle with in their lives. This connects to my inquiry question because as a counsellor/social worker
you are constantly helping people, sharing different coping methods with them and giving them ways to
help strategize their mental health issues. I also want to share this on my website and Instagram page to
try my best to help make a difference in people.

Interdisciplinary and core competencies connect: “I can express my needs and seek help when needed.”
This is one of the core competencies that I have a strength in and connect to. With my capstone and my
schoolwork in general, I will ask my teacher and peers questions that I have when I need help. I will
make sure I have a good understanding of what I am doing before I just do it. I should have a set plan
before I start which means I need to proofread my work before I check it and I can also ask a teacher or
friend to look at it and make sure it looks good. I think it’s good to reach out for help because if you
don’t you might sit there lost and confused the whole time if you don’t want to speak up and ask. This is
connected to my project because I won’t be able to do this without asking for clarification and help with
some things.

“I can form new ideas that serve a purpose” During my Capstone, I have come up with new ideas along
the way. I have added new information and ideas throughout the process of working on my capstone.
For example, I created a survey for my capstone halfway through Capstone and I added it because I felt
like it would be good to have opinions and answers from teenagers as my Capstone focuses on
teenagers. I think that creating the survey helped to improve my Capstone because it gives proof and
evidence that I got people’s personal opinions on mental health.
Capstone Presentation: For my capstone, I created an instagram account and a website. I presented my
instagram account by having a public account and making regular posts on it as much as possible about
different mental health disorders, struggles and addressing that these problems are normal and talking
about different coping methods and strategies that may help and encourage people to try. I briefly
talked about my personal experience with anxiety on my website because I think it is good for people to
read and see that they aren’t alone, and my story might be similar and relatable for them. My instagram
account is public and it was ongoing along the way of my Capstone, and it included different updates
and posts about different disorders throughout my capstone. I made my account look nice and
presentable so others would press on it and be appealed to look and read it. I put all of my information
from my Instagram posts into my personal website for my Capstone because it gives people an option of
where they want to read the information. I also included a survey that I sent out to teenagers about
their personal experiences.

Description of my Capstone: For my capstone, I created an instagram page and a website about mental
health tips and help for teenagers on different common disorders. On my instagram page, I tried my
best to post a few times a week about mental health tips, coping methods, and more that people can
use to help themselves during a hard time. I researched different mental health websites and read
about people’s personal experiences and what they have done and used to help them get better, mainly
in teenagers. I created a survey and sent it out to my friends and peers that asked a few questions about
their personal experiences and thoughts on mental health. I connected with my counsellor (my mentor)
and I talked to her about what she thought would help to improve my project and she gave me lots of
helpful feedback. I studied different mental health disorders and write a brief summary about them on
my Instagram account, which is also attached in my website. The final product will be an instagram page
with multiple posts and help, and I tried my best to talk and relate it to people’s personal lives, so others
are able to relate to it if they struggle with the same things. My goal is to help teenagers and high school
students feel better about their mental health disorders and help them feel comfortable with sharing
what they struggle with, and I also want to help them discover new coping strategies and tips to help
feel better.

Resources/Technology/Skills:

-Created a website

-Created an instagram account, organize it, post on it, make detailed posts.

-Learned how to create and function my website properly and organize it

-Communicate/Meet up with my mentor as much as possible

-Asked my teachers questions along the way about my website, small problems that could be fixed.

Mentors/Community Connections:
My mentor for my Capstone is my counsellor, Ms Glassco. Ms Glassco is a school counsellor, but she also
is a registered clinical counsellor, which means she’s able to be a counsellor in many other places
outside of the school and do a bigger and more important job. She has helped me by discussing topics
with me that she might hear a lot as working in a high school and she has talked to me about common
mental health disorders and problems that she sees that teenagers often struggle with. She also helped
me to discuss coping methods and tips that she tells her students, and I can go off of that as a guide. I
mainly messaged with Ms. Glassco about my Capstone, and I met up with her for a in person meeting
once. She really helped me by giving me her personal opinion and she also helped me by being honest. If
I had something on my Instagram page or website that looked off, she told me and then I was able to fix
it. I wouldn’t have caught my mistakes without someone else’s opinion.

Project Limitations: My biggest limitation while working on my Capstone was trying to decide what to
talk about and how to talk about it. I was unsure of what mental disorders I was going to talk about at
first. I did some research on the most common mental health struggles in teenagers, and I also talked to
my counsellor/mentor about what she thinks. I ended up figuring it out by discussing it in detail with my
counsellor and by researching on different platforms. Another limitation that I had was the information
that I was posting because I was unsure if people were going to be interested in it or not. I didn’t know
what was appealing to people, I fixed this by asking some people what they would like to see if they
were struggling with a mental health issue and what they would do. I ended up coming up with 4
categories of information that I was going to post on Instagram- what is the disorder, how is it
diagnosed, how can you cope with it, and medications for that disorder.

Other Considerations:
- Talking to peers and friends about their experiences and asking them for any strategies they used to
cope with mental health problems, creating the survey and getting feedback from that.
-Asking my mentor if she had any advice how to make my website and Instagram page look good and
welcoming.
-Get as much advice and support as possible
-Help with creating my website and putting it together, making it look presentable and making sure all of
my information is accurate.

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