Enter the 2024 Posters for Change contest HERE and help us increase mental health awareness and access to resources. Read below for all you need to know to get started. Thank you for creating art that ends the stigma, changes the narrative, and saves lives!
Thanks to all our Posters for Change participants and the teachers who support mental health education!
Posters for Change Submission Information
The 2024 6th Annual Posters for Change Mental Health Poster Contest has begun! Each year Counselors for Change sponsors a mental health awareness poster contest open to public, private, and home-schooled 6-12th grade students.
All interested 6th -12th grade students as well as undergraduate students are encouraged to enter our Annual Mental Health Posters for Change Contest and help us:
-Increase Mental Health Awareness
-Change the Conversation, End Stigma, Save Lives
-Foster a Culture of Inclusion
Thanks to our Posters for Change sponsors, James’s Journey and Seacoast Bank, eight finalists will win up to $100 awards to honor them as Advocates for Change and support their outreach efforts. Email us at info@counselorsforchange.org with any questions regarding entry.
There will be up to three posters selected for junior high school (6th-8th grade), up to three posters selected for senior high school (9th-12th grade), and up to two posters chosen for undergraduate college or trade/technical school awards. The winning posters will be selected based on the following considerations:
Empower Award: Posters that best empower people with resources to improve their mental health with representations of healthy skills and resources to achieve optimal mental health and wellness.
Inspire Award: Posters that best inspire people to take action to improve individual and community mental health by changing the conversations around mental health and challenges destructive mental health myths, stereotypes, and stigmas.
Connect Award: Posters that best illustrate positive mental health related themes of inclusion, equality, equity, and social justice and challenges biases and judgements.
Prevent Award: Posters that best illustrate suicide prevention and awareness themes that encourage and support those struggling with suicidality and their loved ones.
Posters will be judged on originality, creativity, and visual impact related to mental health topics and themes.
Regulations:
- Any 6-12th grade student(s) currently enrolled in a public, private, or home school program may participate.
- Any student in their first 4 years of an undergraduate program, technical or trade school may participate.
- Posters may be created by individual students or by groups of same grade students. One prize will be shared for group created posters.
- Poster must incorporate the QR code and website image below into the design linking people to free crisis hotlines, assessments, and information about counseling.
- All posters must be submitted by February 23, 2024. First round poster selections will be announced publicly March 23, 2024, on Counselors for Change’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. Finalists will be contacted directly by April 6, 2024 prior to public announcement. Awards will be distributed by April 13, 2024.
Designs should consider following guiding principles:
• Poster incorporates healthy coping and self-care strategies.
• Poster increases awareness of accurate mental health information and resources.
• Poster incorporates healthy resources and support systems.
• Poster challenges myths, stigma, and stereotypes by providing accurate facts and data.
Mental Health Topic Ideas for Posters
• Healthy Relationships: Connection as key to wellness, Being a Good Friend/Role Model, Boundaries, Consent, Dating Violence
• Brain Health (sleep, nutrition, exercise, nature, social connections, life balance)
• Emotions, Self-Regulation, & Mindfulness
• Marginalized populations and social justice issues related to mental health
• Academic Pressure & Life Balance
• Stress & Anxiety
• Depression
• Substance use, abuse, and addiction (vaping, drugs, alcohol)
• Healthy media behaviors (social media, video gaming, cellphone use)
• Bullying Prevention
• Suicide Prevention/Awareness
Resource Ideas for Accurate Mental Health Information
- Counselors for Change Resources
- American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry
- American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy
- American Counseling Association
- American Psychiatric Association
- American Psychological Association
- American Psychological Society
- Anti-Defamation League
- American Foundation for Suicide Prevention
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- Center for Mental Health Services
- Mental Health America
- MentalHealth.gov
- National Institute of Mental Health
- National Mental Health Association
- National Women’s Health Resource Center
- The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
- NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness)
- Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
- The Trevor Project
- World Federation for Mental Health
Use of Digital Images in Posters:
Counselors for Change encourages students to incorporate their own original hand drawn, painted, multimedia, or digitally created artwork in their posters. The poster must be able to be scanned for submission. If students wish to incorporate digital images created by others, whether in original or modified format, these images must conform to one of the following conditions and must be limited to 20% of the content:
- Be in the public domain (locatable through sites such as http://www.publicdomainpictures.net/index.php or
https://openclipart.org). - Have a Creative Commons license (locatable through https://search.creativecommons.org, which searches multiple databases, including Google Images, Wikimedia Commons, Pixabay, and Flickr), including sourcing information in order to verify it.
- Be legally purchased from the owner.
- Be accompanied by written permission from the owner.
We encourage students to work with the copyright specialist in their school or zoned school if homeschooled (usually the librarian or the technology specialist).
In any of the above cases, if students incorporate someone else’s work in their poster, appropriate credit must be given upon submission, including: the author’s name and the date the image was created (if available), the database or website from which the image was obtained, and the terms under which the image is used (e.g., public domain, Creative Commons license, etc.). This copyright information can be attached in a separate file labeled Copyright Information with the poster image submission much like a bibliography would be attached to an essay.
Poster entries that do not conform to the above guidelines will be disqualified.
Counselors for Change encourages students to practice good digital citizenship!
Digital submission guidelines:
Posters will be submitted using the provided digital guidelines. Failure to do so will result in disqualification from the contest.
All posters will be submitted in digital form. Students must hold on to the original artwork for posters that were drawn, painted, or used multimedia should it be chosen for an award and displayed in addition to the digital entry. The digital version of the winning poster will be displayed on the Counselors for Change website and facebook and instagram. Organizations who partner with us and share our mission to increase mental health awareness, education, outreach, and advocacy will also have access to display the artwork and note the artist or artists.
- Scan original poster in high resolution and save it as a .png or similiar (.jpg, .pdf) file. You can also use a poster template like those provided by Canva, Adobe, or PowerPoint programs. If you use pictures in your poster, make sure that they are high resolution. If you use a template, you still need to save the poster as a .png file.
- Save the poster as “c4cfirstinitiallastnameschoolgrade” For example: A ninth grader with the first name Eli last name of Smith from Bayside High School would be c4cesmithbayside9.pdf
- The student and their guardian need to complete the Google Consent and Submission Form on time and include all of the following parts in order to have their poster considered for selection: (1) the parent permission form for each participating artist, (2) the student submission form for each participating artist (3) the poster submission attachment and (4) copyright information when digital artwork that is not original is used.
Parents, schools, businesses, and organizations can support this initiative by purchasing a downloadable poster and see past winners’ posters for sale on our Etsy site! You may also purchase framed posters by contacting us and indicating which number poster you want to purchase in the slideshow below.
Want to see more of these posters in your community? Contact us to sponsor poster displays that increase mental health awareness in our community. Your sponsorship supports our efforts to display posters in places such as schools, libraries, court houses, and parks.
Increasing mental health awareness, education, outreach and advocacy through art.
Be the change. Hang a poster to start a conversation, end stigma, and connect people to resources that improve mental health and save lives. Each level allows you to share the impact.