Educational Workshops

Tom Bott and Sherry Jo Matt founded Stop The Judgment Project (STJP) in honor of their daughter, Siena, who tragically died in September 2020 at the age of 21 from fentanyl poisoning. Siena battled mental health disorders throughout her middle and high school years and turned to drugs and alcohol to cope with her illness. STJP’s mission is bringing awareness to the stigma and judgment associated with mental health disorders and substance use disorders in adolescents and young adults.

Last school year, in partnership with the Allegheny Health Network (AHN) Chill Project™ and with the financial support of The PNC Charitable Trust, STJP launched its educational workshop initiative at high schools and middle schools and spoke with over 1800 students across 4 school districts in the Pittsburgh area (Clairton, New Kensington, Parkway West CTC and Northgate). STJP has continued its momentum into this new school year, having spoken with an additional 2500 students across 3 additional school districts (Cornell, Trinity and Bentworth).

STJP’s workshops are conducted by its co-founder, Tom Bott, in collaboration with Dr. C. Thomas Brophy, Medical Director of the Ellen O’Brien Gaiser Center in Butler, PA and a physician board certified in both emergency medicine and addiction medicine and an expert on the neuroscience of addiction.

STJP’s educational workshops provide first hand storytelling from two valuable perspectives. First, students hear from the emotional perspective of a grieving father (Tom Bott). Tom candidly discusses everything from his daughter’s struggles with mental health and substance use disorders throughout middle school and high school to a thoughtful discussion of what his family wonders they could have done differently to help Siena. After Tom's presentation, Dr Brophy presents a straightforward and in depth discussion of the neuroscience of addiction and the effects that drugs and alcohol have on the brain. STJP’s hope is that students are able to connect in different ways with the subject matter, according to their own needs and experiences with substance use and mental health disorders, which will better allow them to communicate with their friends, families, teachers and other students. Students are given a post-presentation survey to allow them to share ways in which the workshop has personally affected them and to allow STJP to collect outcome data from the students in an effort to improve their workshops.