SAMHSA
Community & care
An engaging, music-based way to teach coping, decision-making and protective factors that fits a SAMHSA prevention framework; it supports peer-support and recovery engagement and reduces stigma.
We support prevention and protective factors, coping and decision-making skills, peer-support engagement, recovery support, and reduced risk behaviors with the SEL books, keynotes, and the music recording program.
FAQs
Straight answers.
Yes, when the expense supports an activity in your approved work plan. Federal grants follow Uniform Guidance cost principles — necessary, reasonable, and allocable to the approved project. Your Government Project Officer confirms any specific item.
No, and that matters more here than anywhere else. Programs searching for a list of evidence based programs for youth or evidence based youth violence prevention programs are usually working against an award requirement that names specific registries. We are not listed on one.
If your work plan requires a registry-listed intervention, we do not substitute for it. We function as the engagement layer alongside it, and we would rather say that plainly than let it surface during a site visit.
No, and it is important to be clear about that. The material is educational and expressive — music-based social-emotional skill building. It is not a treatment protocol, it is not music therapy delivered by a board- certified therapist, and it should not be represented as either in a grant narrative. Programs searching for evidence based mental health curriculum should know what our evidence base is and is not before including us in an application. Ask us directly.
SAMHSA budget periods vary by award and frequently do not align to the October-to-September federal fiscal year. Check your Notice of Award. This matters if you are obligating remaining funds.
Universal or selective prevention — skill building for whole populations or at-risk groups, not indicated prevention or treatment for individuals already presenting symptoms. Positioning it above that level in a plan will not survive review.
Yes, on the Psychological Effects of Music Prevention Resource Books. Training covers what the book does, what it does not do, and when a facilitator should refer rather than continue — which matters more in behavioral health settings than anywhere else we work. That book is the only thing we train staff on.
Yes, as a protective-factor activity: structured, prosocial, adult-supervised engagement that builds a skill and a peer group. That is universal or selective prevention, not treatment, and it should be described that way in a work plan. It is not a clinical intervention and carries no clinical claims. If your award requires an evidence-based intervention from a registry, this is not that — ask us what evidence we have before building it into an application.
No. We send our own staff to run the programming. We do not train your staff to run it. Recording and production is a skill set, not a procedure. Trying to hand it off in a few hours would be like teaching a doctor to perform surgery in an afternoon — you would get a session that technically happened and a result nobody wants to hear. This is separate from the staff training we provide on the material and on when to refer, which is a real and important service. The recording programming is delivered by our staff.
No. We are supplemental. We do not replace your SEL curriculum, your trauma-informed practice, or any program you already have in place. If you run a core SEL program, keep it — ours adds a music-based component alongside it. If you have trauma-informed protocols, training, and referral pathways, those stay in force exactly as they are. Nothing in our material substitutes for them, and our facilitators are not a substitute for your clinical, counseling, or behavioral staff. This is the point worth being loudest about here. Your evidence-based intervention, your treatment protocols, and your clinical supervision structure all stay in force. We are universal or selective prevention programming added alongside them, and if your work plan names a registry-listed intervention, ours does not replace it.
Yes. The Psychological Effects of Music interactive Wellness Group Activity works for staff development, grantee convenings, and community events. It is educational programming, not clinical training, and it does not carry continuing education credit for clinical licensure unless we arrange that separately.
How this program runs
Same SIWM work. Built for SAMHSA.
Start with the social emotional learning books. Add a keynote. Bring a recording program when you want participants writing and performing — we produce the song and video.
Aligned with SAMHSA’s prevention, treatment and recovery priorities and trauma-informed principles of safety, trust, peer support, collaboration, empowerment, voice and choice. The program promotes resilience, wellness, positive coping, community connection and measurable participant engagement. CASEL 5 SEL competencies; SAMHSA prevention framework & protective factors; trauma-informed, strengths-based practice; National Core Arts (Music/Media Arts).
Send a request and tell us this is a SAMHSA site.
The Psychological Effects of Music
SEL books & curriculum
SEL books by Ava Johnson plus keynotes for the same rooms.
Ava the Aviator
Keynotes & assemblies
Interactive talks on the science of sound and the psychology of music.
The studio
Recording & music video program
Participants write and perform. We record, produce, and film.