Jessica Isom - The Steve Fund

Jessica Isom

Jessica Isom, MD, MPH is a Steve Fund mental health expert and the lead content developer for My Digital Sanctuary, a platform supporting the mental health and wellbeing of young people of color. Dr. Isom is a board-certified community psychiatrist, clinical assistant professor in the Yale Department of Psychiatry, and a nationally recognized expert in mental health equity. She earned her MD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she also completed an MPH in public health leadership. Dedicated to addressing structural racism in healthcare, Dr. Isom’s work spans teaching, clinical practice, and consultation through her company Vision for Equity LLC, empowering organizations to adopt equity-minded approaches that improve outcomes for underserved populations.

All 16 Insights 16

Meditating on Creativity for Hope and Healing

INSIGHT 26 Nov 2024

Your creativity can be your guide for finding hope, strength, and healing. Historically, creative artistry has shown us that we don’t have to accept the world as it is. We can each use our creative gifts to express our feelings about the present reality and to imagine a healthier, more just world. ...

Setting Emotional Creativity Goals

INSIGHT 25 Nov 2024

Before engaging in a creative activity to support emotional resilience and regulation, it’s helpful to explore your needs and identify your ideal outcome. Consider your emotional goal, choose a creative tactic, decide on the emotional approach that works best for you, and then determine how this activity will help you. Here are four steps to help set you on the path toward managing your emotions and mental health productively.

Embrace Hope and Healing through Creativity

INSIGHT 25 Nov 2024

Creating art is a powerful way to regulate your emotions and support your resilience. Here are eight creative ideas to support your emotional well-being and explore the science of hope. Use paper or any medium you like, including the Shuffles app from Pinterest, which can help you create, publish, and share your art. Let’s get started.

Creativity Is a Tool for Raising and Maintaining Hope

INSIGHT 25 Nov 2024

Creativity and the arts can support our emotional regulation and resilience. Your creativity can help you express yourself and manage emotional responses that might otherwise turn you away from our identified goals, pathways to achieve them, and a sense of personal agency. But how do you get started? Let’s talk about it!

Meditating on Hope and Motivation

INSIGHT 25 Nov 2024

What sources of motivation do you draw on to care for your mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual health? Soul care for each of us can sometimes begin with reflecting on our experiences or the stories of others. Pausing to consider goals from our past, present, and for the future, can allow new ideas, goals, or action steps to come into focus. Try this mindfulness coloring exercise to get started.

Your Story Matters, and Sharing It Does Too!

INSIGHT 25 Nov 2024

Throughout our diverse histories, stories have always held power in communities of color. The sequence of creating a story about your personal journey can help you to clarify your thoughts, process your emotions and experiences, and create connections. Here are seven thought starters and writing prompts to help you get started — whether you share your story in person, through a video, social post, or in writing.

How Your Story Can Help You Find Hope and Healing

INSIGHT 25 Nov 2024

Like many of you, as a young person of color I often wondered where my life journey and the stories it holds fit into the larger history of my community. While I recognized that storytellers have long held the power to inspire hope and resilience, I questioned whether my own narrative might do the same. ...

A Coloring Meditation on Building Healthy Relationships

INSIGHT 25 Nov 2024

Focusing on your relationship with yourself is a powerful way to strengthen your ability to build relationships with others. Here’s a way to take a breath and meditate on caring for yourself and others as you build healthy relationships. As you prioritize emotional well-being and mental health, you become better able to care for people you value, and cultivate hope, resilience, and a commitment to thriving at school, work, and beyond.

Build Your Hope Network

INSIGHT 23 Nov 2024

Ready to identify and cultivate a support network that fosters hope, healing, and resilience in your life? Recognizing individuals who know and understand you can create a network of trusted allies who uplift and empower you during challenging times. Why? Because they value your strengths, contribute to a hopeful, healthy mindset, and are available to support you. Grab a notebook and let’s get started!

Connecting with Ourselves and Others to Find Hope and Healing

INSIGHT 23 Nov 2024

Building healthy relationships with trusted friends, adults, and mentors who support you for who you are can help you find the hope and healing you need to thrive. As a young person of color, my chosen family and growing social network created space for new ways of thinking, feeling, and behaving that were missing in important ways within my own family. Here’s what I did about it to support my mental health and well-being.

The Color of Hope

INSIGHT 23 Nov 2024

Sometimes it’s helpful to slow our minds down by doing some simple crafts and creative work. Here’s a coloring sheet to meditate on hope, which is more than just wishful thinking. Hope is a belief in the possibility of a brighter future and an understanding of our own ability to shape it. Ready?

How Hope Heals — and Sets Us Free

INSIGHT 23 Nov 2024

Hope is more than just wishful thinking. Hope is believing in the possibility of a brighter future and understanding our ability to shape it. I learned about the science of hope, which shows that setting goals, identifying pathways, and moving forward can profoundly affect us — and our mental health. I’ve seen firsthand how hope can be a beacon of light that guides us through challenges to build our resilience and find healing.

Cultivating Hope Skills for Healing and Well-being

INSIGHT 23 Nov 2024

Learning to “raise” hope in our lives is something each of us can do each day. With guidance, intentionality, and patience, you can find support to cultivate hope as part of your mental health and well-being journey. Studies show that learning to cultivate hope can support you as an individual, and as a member of your community, to set goals, cope in daily life, and give you tools to maintain hope — even in tough times.

Liberating Ourselves to Find Hope and Healing

INSIGHT 23 Nov 2024

Understanding the science of hope is a journey toward freeing ourselves from moments of despair and helplessness to move towards our goals. As a young person of color, I benefited from this understanding of hope at each phase of my personal and professional journey. Hope helps us see beyond challenges to envision and create a brighter future. Let’s explore how you can free yourself from challenges to your well-being and the impacts of oppression to cultivate hope.

Freedom Dreaming: What Are Your Deepest Dreams and Highest Hopes?

INSIGHT 14 Nov 2024

Can you imagine your life or the world free of societal constraints and oppressive forces? What are your dreams? What do you hope for? What possibilities do you see when you look ahead? What does freedom look like to you? What supports your mental health and well-being?To help get started, let’s read a poem and do a little writing. Ready?

Freedom Dreaming: What Do You See When You Dream about the Future?

INSIGHT 14 Nov 2024

Freedom Dreaming is a tool for survival that has been used for centuries by people of color to create space to exist despite societal constraints faced in their daily lives. While Freedom Dreaming can be used to imagine a future without societal constraints and oppressive forces, it can also be used each day to support our mental health and emotional well-being.