In conjunction with May’s Mental Health Awareness Month the HOPE Squad of Carbon, Emery & Grand Counties will be hosting a Self-Care Selfie Challenge. Suicide Prevention Specialist, Amanda McIntosh took time to sit down with Castle Country Radio to discuss all the details.

“So overall there are nine different strategies to self-care for our purpose we wanted to simplify it just so that we can gain the participation. But we’re going to focus on four elements of self-care and those elements are the emotional/spiritual self-care, physical self-care, environmental self-care, and social self-care. Now for the month of May the HOPE Squad of Carbon, Emery & Grand Counties in conjunction with Southeast Utah Health Department are going to be putting four banners in all three counties,” said McIntosh. There will be different explanations for each of the four elements and examples will be given for each self-care.

“So what we’re doing is encouraging our community to take pictures of themselves performing their self-care, whether its listed on the banner or not and scan the QR code that’s on the banner or send it through Facebook messenger to the HOPE Squad of Carbon, Emery & Grand Counties to enter for a chance to win a grand prize,” said McIntosh. The contest will run the entire month of May and a grand prize winner will be chosen from each county. Interested individuals can enter multiple times throughout that month with a different self-care element each time you submit a photo.

For more information about the Self-Care Selfie Challenge visit the HOPE Squad of Carbon, Emery & Grand Counties Facebook page. “I’m going to be posting it on the HOPE Squad of Carbon, Emery & Grand Counties this weekend so that everybody can gear up. The contest will begin on May 3 which is the first Monday but it will run throughout the whole month. So you know, get those selfies taken. It is not selfish to take care of yourself,” explained McIntosh.