From Chris Gethard, the creative mind behind Wellness Together’s newest program, Laughing Together:

“We’re very excited to announce that Wellness Together’s efforts to expand advocacy, awareness, and access to mental health for students now includes an exciting new program: Laughing Together.

Here’s how it works:

1. Wellness Together keeps a close eye on all sorts of research and methodologies that might have a positive impact in school environments. And there’s a lot of research out there regarding how the arts can be used as a low-impact, destigmatized entry point into conversations regarding mental health. Specifically, comedy is an art form that young people take to, one that can also have positive effects in a number of areas, including anxiety reduction, the building of group bonds, peer-to-peer conversation, being comfortable with failure, and making decisions while feeling pressure. 

2. A few years back, I began working with Wellness Together. I am an active advocate for mental health and after speaking at the Wellness Together conference and learning about their work, I joined the team myself. I have a long history of teaching comedy and know dozens of the best teachers of comedy spread throughout the United States. I gathered together a core group of working artists who are excited about the idea of using comedy to facilitate positive growth in schools. 

3. We pooled our efforts, did a deep dive into the research, looked at how comedy is usually taught, and shaped curriculums for our qualified, professional comedians to teach. It turns out, that when you take away the pressure to be funny, or the goal of putting on a hilarious show, the exercises taught in a comedy class offer up dynamite lessons on simple communication, encourage groups to come together for common goals, and empower self-expression. Our curriculum development is overseen by clinicians who focus in on what’s most helpful in schools. Our professional artists are seasoned at teaching this type of material. And that crossover leads to actionable resources for your school community all delivered via workshops that are hands-on and fun.

We’ve beta-tested these workshops in schools in recent months and the early reviews show that we’ve got a fun, interactive, engaging workshop to offer you. A workshop that keeps participants laughing the whole time while walking away with new tools in their communication toolbox.

We are excited to offer both professional development workshops as well as student-focused workshops. We pride ourselves on our adaptability. While we’ve got a structured curriculum that is our standard offering, we are happy to work with school systems to build customized versions to fit your needs, including the number of attendees, length of workshop, and available space.

We think Laughing Together has practical applications in any school or organization, especially schools looking for low-impact ways to begin mental health conversations, increase arts presence in schools, and empower student voices.

In short: we have something very cool on our hands and we would love the opportunity to introduce it to your school, team, or organization.”

-Chris Gethard