Decode Colorado
Decode Colorado: Teen Mental Health
Special | 56m 40sVideo has Closed Captions
Exploring teen mental health through powerful stories with hope for a supported future.
Colorado’s young people, families, and experts reveal the challenges of navigating mental health struggles and demonstrate that when youth feel supported and find purpose in community, they are able to push through stigma and reach for actionable solutions. Despite heart-rending stories of unimaginable loss, communities around the state show resilience and fight for a brighter future.
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Decode Colorado is a local public television program presented by PBS12
Decode Colorado
Decode Colorado: Teen Mental Health
Special | 56m 40sVideo has Closed Captions
Colorado’s young people, families, and experts reveal the challenges of navigating mental health struggles and demonstrate that when youth feel supported and find purpose in community, they are able to push through stigma and reach for actionable solutions. Despite heart-rending stories of unimaginable loss, communities around the state show resilience and fight for a brighter future.
Problems playing video? | Closed Captioning Feedback
How to Watch Decode Colorado
Decode Colorado is available to stream on pbs.org and the free PBS App, available on iPhone, Apple TV, Android TV, Android smartphones, Amazon Fire TV, Amazon Fire Tablet, Roku, Samsung Smart TV, and Vizio.
Welcome to decode Colorado.
I'm Tom Musson for PBS 12.
From 2021 to 2023, high school students experiencin persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessnes dropped by 14 percentage points.
That's according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Although this is great news for the latest Healthy Kids, Colorado survey data, mor work is still needed to be done to help remove the stigma surrounding teen mental health and help our youth to thrive.
To learn more about teen mental health.
PBS 12 commissioned Colorado documentary filmmakers Rob and Chelsea Jackson to delve into the critical issue facing our young people today.
Here's what they had to say about what they learned.
I think when you're talking to somebody about a topic such as suicide, you, you obviously have to approach i with great sensitivity and care.
And I think going into that interview I was putting, I was sort of feeling that mindset and a whole in a way that I ha never thought about it before, just thinking about the fact that I was going to be sitting with somebody who had experienced this great loss.
I took it very seriously that I would be sitting with her for quite a while, and was feeling really honored that she was willing to open up her home and her space and her story to us.
When I put myself back in that day spending that time with Lori, I think, you know, Rob and I each were sitting there feeling very emotional and we cried with her.
And, I think it' really important to be willing to sit in that space with your participants, and feel that and, and not shy away from, you know, we're human.
We're we're not just filmmakers.
We're not a brick wall.
And so we didn't want to avoid our feelings.
You can't ask questions that are potentially going to lead them to disclose a trauma that they may be haven't necessarily worked through all the way and fully processed yet.
You don't want you want to avoid emotionally baiting them to get a big dramatic shift in the final piece.
You want to make sure that they are in control of the boundaries that they have around their own story.
Those are all thing that are really important to us.
So we were very fortunate to reach out to Lori, who is open to speak with us, about Annalee, who lost her life to suicide.
I think some surprises that happen mostly occurred out in Marino which is in northeast Colorado.
Chelsea and I quite honestly had never heard of Marino.
We had worked on other projects further northeast, but it's a very small town.
It's a ranching community.
And we were introduced to a couple folks out there who we didn't expect to speak to.
One of them was Jake Hettinger, and he was a very good friend of Annalise.
Jake is now a student at Colorado State, and he pretty much admitte that, you know, it's very taboo.
He was very open about how taboo it is to speak about mental health struggles, particularly in our ranching community.
You know, a lot of times in the past, parents have told their kids to if they fall down, just dust yourself off and get back up.
There was another person we spoke to out in Sterling, Jason co-owns with his family at the Livestock Commission out there, which was a really big job.
So he's an auctioneer.
And, you know, he has his cowboy hat.
Cowboy boots.
He's not maybe who you would stereo stereotype as somebody who would be a leader in the community on mental health.
And he freely admits that he was probably too tough on his own children.
But now, especially after a recent spate of suicides in the region, Jake told us that there were about seven teenagers who, took their own lives in th fall, around the fall of 2020.
So our dream when we were making this was that potentially it could be shown in schools.
Potentially families woul sit down together and watch it.
And you know, maybe the conversation wouldn' have to precipitate watching it, but the watching it could precipitate the conversation.
And just by watching the piece, maybe that sparked some ideas or, you know, Alejandro, for example, was very timid about talking about this sort of thing until more recently.
He you kind of opened up to his friends and he says he's still working on it, but his friends are like yeah, you're doing a good job.
So, you know, just I think having role models like that and seeing that people are making strides to improve their mental health and they are, you know, willing to be put themselves out there in a big way on this program, for instance, it takes a lot of courage to let cameras into your life while you're at school or, you know, to let cameras into your life after probably the most heartbreaking incident that's ever occurred in your entire life.
That takes a lot of bravery.
And so I think it's very inspirational.
I could see some folk still retaining the attitude of, you need to just toughen up a little bit.
You know, everybody goes through these challenges in life.
In fact today's kids may have it easier than any generation before.
There is an attitud that that you know still exists.
Whether you're in a rural are or a suburban or an urban area amongst a large portion of the population, there i an attitude of, you know, kids should be a little tougher or kids can't all be experiencing anxiety.
And I think that we have to, you know, just be ope minded to the fact that we are presenting kid with so much stimuli right now.
They were born into a world that is different than anything that we, you know, we were born into, even as people in our late 30s and early 4040s.
It's hard for us to probably understand the level of sort of bombardment that children are getting, whether it's from the variety of TV that's available at the click of a button.
You used to have to watch whatever it was on the channel that you were that was available on your TV.
And now you can pick from a million or more different options to view online.
Not all of them are appropriate for kids.
Kids are stumbling into violence and, you know, probably negative sources of programing rather easily these days.
So I think it's important that we not shut down kids who say they need a mental health break, that we not shut down kids who say they have anxiety.
Just because somebody is complaining about anxiety doesn't mean that they're being soft or they're being weak.
In fact, it's probably a show of strength that they're willing to bring that up.
I think what we learn from this is that it's really important for parents and other adults and mentors to be regulating themselves.
You see all the time when you're driving and you see parents who are literally looking at their phones while they're driving, which is obviously danger, dangerous and illegal now.
And so but I think all of us have been guilty of things like that in the past.
And so if our kids are seeing us use our phones in dangerous ways, or even just sort of escaping into our phones or, you know, at the dinner table if we're on our phone, that's just setting a really bad example.
And so we hope that by sharing some light on what happened with Annalee and, her family, that, you know, other families will maybe reevaluate their relationship with cell phones and also with social media.
You know, it's really interesting.
We came across a stat when doing this piece that from the year 2008 to 2020 and this is on a national level, girl between the ages of 15 and 24, their suicide rates increased by 87% in 2008.
You know, that's around the time that Facebook is really starting to happen.
Within a few years after that, Instagram and these other apps, you know, TikTok and Snapchat since then have really taken off.
Undeniably a direct correlation between kids being super engage on these social media platforms and their mental health declining.
We spend a little bit of time with Annalise, mother, who was willing to scrol through Annalise TikTok account, and that was probably the most painful part of the interview for Lori shot.
And we try not to press her to do that for too long.
But, you know, just seeing what her daughter was subjected to on social media, it made sense as to how she could have gone down a rabbit hole.
That really hurt her self-esteem.
And so we hope that other parents, by being exposed to this, will sort of take action and interven if they see their own children sort of disappearing into their phones.
Another thing that we talked a lot about with, Sherry Simmons in particular, was regulating your own body and mind as a parent, as a caregiver, as a teacher.
Your kids are going to meet you where you are.
And so if you're not regulated, if you're not taking care of your own mental health and physical health, they're going to see that you'r sort of modeling the behavior.
And so it's really important that when you go into those conversations and even in just your everyday life, that you are regulating yourself, whatever that might look like for you, if you're finding yourself at a super heightened sense and you're you don't have your shoes o like it's time to get to school, like it might be time to just take a deep breath, maybe run your hands under cold water splash some water on your face if you can, like take a little lap around the house or something.
Because when you calm yourself down, they are watching you and they're understanding like, oh, that's, that's what I can do.
When I'm feeling dysregulated, I can calm myself down.
And now we're both goin to move out into the day feeling more regulate and under our own self control.
There are many resources available to help as we go through this hour together.
We want to remind teens, parents and everyone in our community what those resources are.
The 988 Colorado Mental Health Line is available for free.
Immediate human support 24/7.
You can call, text or live chat with 988 today and they're ready to listen.
You can also visi I matter colorado.org Colorado youth can receive up to six free therapy sessions through I matter with English and Spanish language services available.
Visit I matter colorado.org to learn more.
We've covered a lot so far, but we have more to explore.
Here's Decode Colorado Teen mental Health.
There is times in my life where I felt really alone.
I'm working through a lot of things.
It doesn't feel like I need to hide that.
It kind of just feels like.
Yeah, we'r all to some extent in this boat.
So why not talk about it?
We are finally realizing that mental health is health.
I think for a long time we believed that health was the physical body.
And we're finally putting the head back on the body.
We realize that the brai operates the rest of the body, and it's not fully developed for teens.
It means they hav a very emotionally based brain.
The frontal lobe is not fully developed until we're in our mid to late 20s.
So they're going to be acting out what they feel.
If you look at the CDC reports, it's 40% of high schoolers felt persistently sad or hopeless for over two weeks at a time.
If you look at high school girls, it was 60%.
1 in 4 of those girls had thoughts of wanting to kill herself.
We come into th world in our own biology, right?
And some of us feel emotions really sensitively.
And so that's kind of that biological piece.
And then we have the social pieces.
Those social pieces ar how we interact with the world.
How does the world interact with us?
There's 1.3 million kids in the state of Colorado, and 80% of mental health professionals don't accept insurance.
And those providers are generally full.
I think that's one of the biggest pushes is how do we increase access?
How do we make sure we thin about our families in Colorado that are in rural Colorado to.
I'm Jake Hettinger.
I'm from Reno, Colorado.
I'm the fourth generation on this farm.
Started back in 1952.
Merino is a very small farming community.
For example, our graduating class had 20 kids in it.
I spent all my life here.
I never really left the town for any long periods of time until I went to college up in Fort Collins.
I'm an ag business major up there.
I do plan on coming back to Merino.
I like this way of life and where I live, and the community is just really great.
I call Merino home.
Living in a rural community.
You don't really hear or know of anybody struggling with mental health.
They're not going to go see the help because of the stigma in rural communities because they're going to think that people are going to go around and talk about them and, and, and say that they're weak.
I know of two mental health prof The stigma i awful in mental health, period.
But in agriculture.
And I was guilty of thi with my boys, when I was young.
You got hurt Your dad told you?
Toughen up.
Don't cry.
Get back out there.
Get your job done.
The common consensus is, if you're struggling, you.
You figure it out on your own.
You buckle down, you get through it.
There's still a lot of mental health stigma, even in this current generation of young people.
That has to do with differences of where they come from, who has the ability to talk about mental health, what families do they come from, who can afford mental health, who can get access to mental health?
There's still high rates of depression.
Youth who aren't getting access to care, but with like access to care.
My name is aura.
I've grown up here in Colorado my whole life.
I was one Grand Junction, Colorado, and then I came to Aurora when I was seven.
I had a pretty, I would say, a relatively normal childhood.
I was definitely a kid that was outside a lot.
I frequently found myself in trees.
I have a couple scars from a couple falls.
I've taken.
I did gymnastics.
I was quite a rambunctious child, sometimes a bit of a menace.
Than speaker.
I love to sing and dance.
I struggled a lot with mental health, kind of in past years due to a couple of things that happened, and I didn't really kno how to identify those feelings or how to talk about them, o even if I could talk about them.
My parents are immigrants and they've worked really hard for all the things they've had and they've gone through things that I couldn't even imagine going through.
So it's kind of like the question of like, is this thing as important as the things that they've gone through?
Like, are my struggles even valid because they've gone through so much worse?
The first time that I really heard about mental healt was from my mom, when I was like under ten I'm not really sure when, but.
And then also the school, that was something that they talked about.
I mean, like, you guys like I'm very comfortable with you guys and I am I feel okay sharing it.
At leas I'm getting better at sharing.
But yeah, we both know that.
My name is Alejandro Chavez and I live in Firestone, Colorado.
I am a senior in high school and I graduate next Saturday.
It's a.
Ever since I was probably 7 or 8, I had really high anxiety.
I wasn't necessarily aware tha it was called anxiety or what.
I just knew that certain situations made me feel not okay.
I was six when my parents separated and then seven when they divorced.
That had a large play, and my whole life since then.
I felt very sad for a long time.
My parents tried their best, but were so wrapped u in dealing with their own lives and each other that I didn't talk about how I felt.
I just repressed those feelings, ignored them.
And then in eighth grade, I was in a really bad spot.
That's when I was actually diagnosed with depression.
What we know about teens is that at least 20% of all teens would like to go to therapy, and we also know that only about half end up in therapy.
That's difficult to hear, because we also know from research and studies that therapy works.
My therapist and have a really good relationship.
She's not afraid to try different techniques because I want to be better.
I am not afraid to try them, even if they seem kind of wacky.
I think about the multiple factors at play when we think about the development of mental health challenges or illness.
There are individual factors, like your early environments, that are really shaping your brain development that's needed for every thought and every feeling and every behavior, every action, every plan you make.
It's this is the organ.
It regulate who we are, every organ system, our life path and our relationships.
And that family relationship is probably the most critical early environment we have in our lives.
Parents, grandparents, foster parents.
Caregiver in our lives, coaches, teachers, whoever it is in your lif that is a stable, caring adult who knows you, who can respond, can see if you're in distress or something's changed, who can help you get support or help support you.
If I would have been explicitly told that having those feelings is okay, it would have been really helpful.
I think a lot of the times that I've been kept or have kept myself from accessing resources for mental health have been times where I thought things weren't that bad.
And then in hindsight, I realized that they were actually quite bad.
So I think when you validat people's feelings and emotions, they know that they can come forward and talk about those things.
If we're not practicing healthy self-care and coping skills, then our children are going to regulate to where we're regulated.
So it's on us to practice our own self-regulation so that we can teach them what that looks like.
Adults pla a powerful role in teens lives, maybe more powerfu than they know, but they aren't the only powerful thing in their lives.
There are so many other things that have huge influence over the decisions our kids make that are out of our control.
Right out there on right out there.
Yes.
Yeah.
On a Li was kind of the center cog of everything.
She was the little sister that the brothers always said was spoile and got everything she wanted.
I met on her when she came t Marino, when I was a freshman.
She was also coming in as a freshman.
Really quiet.
I went up and talked to her, and right away, we just hit it off.
She was really such a caring person.
Really funny too.
Gosh, she had such a good sense of humor.
Her sophomore year, there's some kids that were really cruel.
The honor.
You know, there's a boy, an individual boy that was just relentless.
And she told us about it, but wanted us not to take action on it because we live in a small community.
She would tell me all the time about what she was going through.
If it was something on her phone, she would show me in on her phone.
And, you know I'd always talk to her about it and try to help her through it.
I've always supported mental health for all of our kids.
I started calling around, and I could not find a mental health counselo until I got to the Front Range.
The difference out here is the resources that we have available to these kids.
My cousin, who is a mental health professional, she has over 250 clients that she has to try to get through every month.
And, the age of the kid is going down.
They're getting younger.
We just we don't have the resources.
They're six months out to get help.
And when they need help, they need help.
Now.
We got a counselor, and it was a 2.5 hour drive up to and a half hou drive back, but it was worth it.
I had conversations with the counselor.
I was concerned at that time about the addiction to phone.
She's addicted to her phone.
She's on her phone all the time.
If we can help maybe try and steer that clear.
And I didn't even kno the depth of what she was into.
She would show me, like, girls putting on makeup and stuff and saying, oh should I do this with my hair?
And should I do this with my makeup or eyeliner?
And I, like, told her I was like, well, I don't know much about this stuff.
You know, but, pretty soon that was al her social media would look like whenever she showed it to me.
Was, kind of her comparing herself to these other, other people.
And, I thought it was a little concerning.
You can't unsee what was being fed to her.
It pulls me down a rabbit hole that I have to crawl out of.
The anxiety, the depression.
You have no future.
It's there.
So no wonder these kids are fighting such a battle.
I remember this like it was yesterday.
Who?
Her parents were out of town and, on a texted me and asked if I wanted to go to town with her and get dinner.
She had a big lead in the play before we left for the weekend and I wanted her to go with us.
We were going to Texas to t see our son and she's like, mom, I wanted the leads in the play.
The teachers were worried that if I go, I'll get Covid, I'm going to stay.
We went to town, got dinner, had a real fun time, and I said, I'll see you tomorrow.
That next day, I saw her parked at the cafe over here, and I waved to her and she waved back.
She was getting in her pickup, and that's that's the last time I saw her.
That night, a sheriff came and told me what happened, and, it was it was devastating.
When I went to her room that day after she died, I remembe opening up one of her journals.
Nobody is going to love me unless I look the part.
I look at other girls profile and it makes me feel worse.
Nobody will love someon who is ugly and as broken as me.
Technically, if I kill myself, the problem would be gone.
I do want to say something to parents who have lost their kid to suicide.
It's not your fault.
They had great parents and they didn't survive.
And I'm sorry.
Losing a close friend like that so suddenly, and being in a rural area and not, you know, having many people to talk to you.
It's been challenging.
The family have bee friends of ours for a long time.
When I got the phone call hearing about on a, I was going, that can't be, that can't be on.
And our children are the future.
Sorry.
And I just can't stand to see another pre-teen or teen suicide aroun the time went on a passed away.
We had in northeast Colorado I believe, seven other suicides in our age group.
This morning, dozens of parents who say social media played a significant role in their children's deaths are pressuring the governmen to hold social media responsible parent with pictures of their children who were harmed or killed by what they saw and experienced online for change gaining momentum.
41 states now suing meta.
How could any child be exposed to this?
Well, they're growing up in a totally different landscape than we grew up in.
Not everybody had their own devices.
And then the harms of some of these tools, like we're seeing now, a lot of kids are her in our care because somebody's been bullying them online and nobody knew about it.
And some of those kids survived suicide attempts.
And these kids did not.
People can see things that they would normally never say out loud, but they'll see it on social media.
And that really does impact young people.
It hits them hard and they take it to heart.
I had no clue she was on Tik Tok until the forensics tea was able to get into her phone.
There are apps out there that we don't even know where on their phone.
They can disguise them as calculators.
Basicall another phone inside your phone so they can have ton of pictures or social media apps inside there that you can't get in without a code.
There's so much stimuli out there for kids today, and we have an entire generation of kids who don't necessarily know how to just be.
There's just so much coming at them that their brains become primed for addictive behaviors because of the dopamine release that they get from social media.
Social media is addictive.
We know from studies that it has the same effect on the brain as any other addictive substance.
We've got to decide how they affect our kids, how we create exposure.
When we create exposure, what we hope they have exposure to limit what they have exposure to as much as you can because you can't control everything.
I found that replacing it with something like, preferabl something that engages your mind a little bit more, has helped and can help form a healthie relationship with social media.
How powerful would it be if in families today, we could say we're all taking a self-care break this Saturday from 2 to 3?
We all get to pick the thing that's going to fill us up, and it can't be our phones an it can't be binge watching TV.
Those pattern stick with kids, youth culture, I think, is predominantly on social media these days.
So if you're not on social media, like you're always kind of missing out on something, and I think it's easier to learn how to use social media in a healthier way than it is to completely get rid of social media, because I don't see that happening in the future.
I think it's our responsibility to learn how to step away versus just scrolling endlessly.
Earlier this afternoon the Senate overwhelmingly passed landmark legislation aimed at keeping kids safer online.
That persistence of the parent who never gave up has paid off.
With the Senate overwhelmingly passing a bill designed to protect kid from dangerous content online.
This is the first major effort by Congress in decades to hold tech companies more accountable.
Doesn't bring our daughter back, but this is a movement.
It's a start towards saving other children and holding social media accountable for what they've done.
At the end of my sophomore year, when I turned 16, I started working.
I became a camp counselor as well.
And with that, I realized tha I really love working with kids.
And that also helped me feel okay and like I have more of a direction to go in life.
It gave me, I guess almost like a sneak peek into, like where I can be like, I was happy, like every single day.
It allows me t feel like I'm having an impact.
And I know that for myself.
When I was younger, I really just wanted somebody there to support me and always be there.
And it allows me to do that as well.
I'm helping heal that inner part of me.
As more and more things happened.
I realized that this is something that it would be helpful to at least talk about.
So I'm a part of a couple clubs at school, and I'm part of the Youth Council on Mental Health.
The big thing for me right now is being able to provide, like the unique perspective that we have as youth, into research and use that in order to improve the field of mental health.
The Youth Council has definitely bee one of the most important ways to show me that I can become a leader in my community, and I can have a more direct impact on things, an I can walk up to a state senator and tell them about my concerns, and they'll actually listen.
I encourage other people that have mental health struggles to get help, because it's better to get help than to put your friends and family through this situation.
I just hope people realize that and realize it's okay to talk about it.
It's something that you'r dealing with and it's something that is a part of your life.
At a moment in time, but it's never who you are.
A little bit scared about my future.
To be honest.
But I think above that fear is hopefulness.
I'm really excited to see where I'll go.
I know that I am fully capable of it, and regardless of how crazy it may seem to want to do whatever I'll figure out a way to do it.
Yeah.
There was once a time in my life when I was surrounded by family, friends, peers, and teachers every day, but I felt completely alone.
But today, I can confidently tell you that is no longer the case.
The idea that we as a human race need each other is one that I've come to know very wel throughout the past few years.
As cliches, it sounds.
Spreading love to everyone you cross paths wit makes the world a better place.
But it all starts with you.
As we star the next chapters of our lives, I would like to ask a few things of you.
I would like you to try try to be emotionally literate, which means recognizing, naming, and expressing your emotions.
Try something you've never tried before and try to sho love to the people around you.
But most importantly, try to show love to yourself.
By trying.
By simply putting in a little bit of effort.
You can go a long way, but please do not try alone.
The people you surround yoursel with, and the larger community that you become a part of, will have such an important impact on your life.
I hope you find your people, the people who show yo unconditional love and support.
I'm so grateful fo and proud of every one of you.
I'm honored to graduate with you all and furthermore call you all my family.
Thank you.
This is our moment.
This is the time fo all of Colorado to come together and say, what do we need to do to help support young people's mental health and healthy development?
How can we support thei physical health and well-being, their learning and education in their home communities, and safety and flourishing and resource opportunities?
How can we use technology to fuel innovation?
How can we find public and private partnerships?
How can we use government at every level and move those levers so that we're aligned to building a system of support for kids throughout their lives and their families for generations to come?
Mental health issues are always going to be there.
They always have been there.
Now it's on us to really teach and mentor what the tools and strategies for dealing with those mental health challenges look like.
And we do tha by the way we live our own lives and the conversations that we have with kids.
Never be afraid to ask a teenager or anyone else if they're thinking about hurting themselves.
It seems like an invasive question.
It is.
It probably feels like sometimes it's none of your business.
It is.
And you may have saved their lives.
What I hope is that mental health is integrate into more facets of our lives.
So it's more integrated in school where kids spend so much time.
It's families are getting education parents are getting education.
And I think getting youth involved in that process, giving them the sense of they can have a say, they can participate in this.
A lot of people in my generation generally are wanting change and are ready to d what it takes to get the change that we think we need and that we know we deserve.
The openness of my generation is really giving me hope.
Building a strong community with the people around me is really important.
And then as I've gotten into therapy again, I feel like I hav a pretty strong sense of myself.
But the stage in my life that I'm in right now is very much so.
Trying to figure out who I am.
And that's okay.
Following the documentary, PBS 12 spoke to teens participating in a special mental health panel.
To find out more about what our young people are facing from their own experiences and in their own voices, here's what they had to share.
My personal experience kind of starte when I was around ten years old.
My youngest sister was diagnosed with something called complex regional Pain syndrome.
Actually at the Children's Hospital of Aurora campus.
And it's a nerve condition and it there's no current cure for it.
It's very painful.
And she was very young when she was diagnosed.
And I remember I was probably around ten when we started managin with pain clinics and outpatient therapies and all of that, and seeing a family member go through something like that, and you can't fix it and you can't add to it at ten years old, and you have to go to school and put on a brave face, and you have to take care of the other sister.
It's heavy.
The next question is regarding current, what do you think are the most common behavioral and mental health challenges youth are facing today?
And how can we break the stigma around talking about mental health?
Who would like to begin?
Okay, so tackl the first part of that question, asking about some of the struggles that our youth are are facing, I think similar to our online environment.
The ways that our communities have adapted post-Covid, a lot of these youth are growing up heavily around the internet.
They're growing up using online tools in in ways that in a lot of things can help benefit their growth in mindset learning.
But on the opposing side of that pendulum can also be really harmful and can create issue like loneliness and depression.
And for the second part of tha question on how to tackle that, how to destigmatize it, I think just continuing the communication, behind it, of opening that door to conversation and really just reassuring that even though these times are very different than how most of our parents and family members grew up, change doesn' always have to be a bad thing, and we have to be able to move through that change with these kiddos and I'm West African, so my parents they put a lot of stress on me to excel academically.
But with that, they also they didn't really address my mental health concerns because what I was doing really well in school, my behavior.
I was really like stressed.
I had a lot of anxiety.
I wasn't speaking to people at all.
I was completely nonverbal, and it wasn't as much of a concern to them because I was doing well in school.
I think growing up I had different behavioral health needs because I think that mental health, especially for youth, it's so different compared to back then because I think that youth like we're aware of it, but we don't always open those conversations like Monica was saying.
So I think that first, like, we really need to like have more targete behavior, health interventions, especially for youth that come from underserved identities.
I think our current interventions, it's very centered around like white straight like straight male youth.
And I think we need to expand that to the Bipoc youth, the queer youth, the youth from Grow Up have them rea identities make real communities becaus like when we do not address then that we lack an important part of the mental health conversation.
And in order to make ou interventions truly effective, we have to engage everybody, especially those those populations that have not traditionally been engage in mental health interventions.
Want to thank you.
I just think that mental health, now more than ever, is more important that as a member of East High School, unfortunately saw the effects of mental health with gun violenc and multiple school shootings, the realization that it was almost a shell shock experience that actually one of the kids who committed these acts of violence was in my class.
I talked with him, and I just didn't realize, you don't know what someone's going through at all times.
And seeing that firsthand had me.
I was more aware and hyper aware that as I was walking around, you just see people with their heads down, quiet, not talking, and recognizing that you really do not know what someone's going through until you're able to ask him.
Get up to know him on that deeper level and just experiencing that and realizing that isolation.
Some people feel has m wanted to go out and help others not feel that way.
Darius, I'm going t have you kick this question off because it's, regarding teens and youth, what do you wish adults understood better about youth mental health?
I think something I wish more adults understood is sometime you don't exactly have the words to describe what you're going through, but that doesn' mean your issues aren't there.
And underlying that, sometimes you're often asked, how are you feeling and how you're doing?
And you just say, goo because you don't have the words to describe truly what you're going through.
But being there and listening more to us youth and understanding that we are all going through somethin and sometimes just get through it, is not the right answer.
Somethin I wish more adults understood.
And I remember at that point I was probably 11, and I remember reaching out to my mo and I said, mom, I'm not okay.
I never said that to anyone in my life.
And I said, mom, I'm not okay.
And my mom is a wonderful person.
She's a great mom.
And she reached out to Children's Hospital and connected me with a therapist.
And since 11 years old, I have seen several talk therapists and it has gotten me to where I am today.
It's got me into the school that I attend.
It's got me into the career that I want to pursue.
It saved my life, but it's also saved other people's lives because I'm still here.
So it was my older sister, actually.
We are super close and she' about seven years older than me, and I really appreciate for he because she was kind of the gap between generations for me and my parents.
So she definitely filled in a lot of blurred lines.
And by having that resource I was able to involve teachers because my teachers, like they reacted very well to my parents, so they were able to like, have like more of a behavioral health plan for me that didn't really impact my schooling.
So it was small steps at a time, but it was like that continuous like form of engagement that really helped.
I think afte seeing the events at my school, I didn't struggle a bit, that I felt isolated, alone.
But knowing my peers and my friends and my mentors I could talk t about what I was going through and realizing I'm not alone in this life.
And I support from everyone around me and how we can use that to help push myself forward has definitely been something.
It doesn't alway pan out in that beautiful, happy ending way for a lot of people, but for me, I'm lucky to be sitting here and advocating, for a lot of kids.
And I'm really glad that I had the support system in my life that allowed me to now support other people through their struggles.
There is so much stigma around mental health, because I think that when you talk about mental health then you're automatically crazy.
You automatically have issues.
I think that's like probably one of the biggest issues, because I think that teen where, oh, teens were aware of mental health, like, we know that it's there, but we all fully know how to address it, especially in a way that feels safe for us.
So I think that trying to navigate that is really difficult.
But I think at the for at the front line, we need to at least open that conversation.
Yes, I think there's a stigma around mental health because thos who are seen getting treatment or getting help are sometimes, I think, perceived as soft or not being able to take care of themselves and helping break down that stigma and realizing that sometimes it's okay to not be okay.
And how can you grow and learn and use your resources community to help yourself get better?
Because once you're better, you're also able to then help other people, like we're doing with the Youth Council on Mental Health.
I don't think suicide is talked about nearly enough as it needs to be, especially as we make that transition from high school to college.
And it's a huge leap.
And you often feel alone that I've seen many kids, once they're in college, take their lives, actually.
And that rate is alarming almos to see how many are doing that and that bringing up the stigma signs of what to look out for.
Something that I think needs to be spread more through high schools, I do have of messaging.
I think a lot of it has to do with our remote world.
Post-Covid, a lot of learning, a lot of development has been shifted to onlin and it's become very adaptable in a lot of ways in the workforce.
That's been a really good thing.
It makes a lot of, of resources more accessible to us.
And in some ways that that counts for mental health resources of online accessibility for that.
But in other ways, it it can result in anxiety and loneliness and depression or bullying on social media.
And I think it's a harder thing to confront when it's not face to face, when that interaction or with those emotions or, where struggles are developing from something that you can't actually confront in person.
It's online.
Yeah.
I think there's an increase more now than ever and pressure to succeed socially, especially with the rise of social media where you're seeing where everyone's at, how often they're goin and where they're going out to and who they're hanging out with that to seeing that makes you kind of feel left out and like you need to be a part of it.
And that social pressure, just like, is automatically applied just because of the access and how accessible social media is for us.
How do you think schools can do better supporting student mental health, continue to be continuing to promote the resources schools have and continue to show, and the mental health professionals who are working with inside the school to continue to walk aroun showing they're there to support has made a huge difference that I, especially after seeing the events of my high school, seeing how those mental health professionals started showing up mor and being seen and making sure that no one has a resource around their communities is something I think schools could do better at.
I think a big misconception is that if we're sad, it's only temporar and sometimes that is the case.
In other times it it's a longer storm with a longer, you know, evacuatio period that we need to wait out.
And that's okay.
But it also means we can't just sit there and wait for it to stop.
We've got to start doing stuff to help us get through it.
And I think a lot of youth it from a parent's perspective, sometimes it can seem over dramatized.
But for your youth, remember a lot of times when they're struggling, they can't see that light at the end of the tunnel.
Their brain.
Does it know in five years I'll look back and think of that as growth.
I will learn from this.
I will mature from this.
But in the moment, if your kid is being bullied at school, they think that their world is falling on top of them.
And I think a big misconception that a lot of adults have is that it'll pass, it'll get better tomorrow or, things like that.
And I think sometimes that i the case, other times it's not.
And we have to continue asking those questions to figure out which side we're working with.
My advice to parent would be to continue to be there and continue to ask those questions and not take greater side for an answer, but also continue to be there and support and show up for them, that you don't realize how important it i when you show up for your kid.
It makes them feel seen and supported, even if they tell you not to come.
Yes.
Oh, so continue to check in and also just notice what they're doing that once habits change.
Sometimes something's not right.
So definitely listen to what their kids are saying, hear what they're doing, and just be there and be supportive so that you're always there.
You're always there to help and support them.
And something that's so crucial that I thin a lot of people don't realize.
I think first and foremost, you have to open the conversation up, even if it's uncomfortable, because it will be uncomfortable.
But I think what teens really need is someone to at least open the conversation, because when a teen says, oh, I'm fine, I'm okay, it doesn't always mean tha they're fine and they're okay.
So have that continuous check in with them.
It's so important for them to really open up because they're not going to open up on the first conversation.
It may not be the 10th or the 20th, but maybe like the 21st conversation.
So I think it's really important because even on the panel, we were talking about being brave and being vulnerable with your teens.
I think for for parents, I think mutual vulnerability helps a lot.
When a whether that's mom and dad or guardian or whatever that relationship looks like, if the adult figure in their life shares vulnerability with them, a lot of times it is reciprocated down the road.
It might not be immediate.
And it's kind of a learning process that adults in day to day life aren't always 100% okay.
And that's something that kids might not know.
They might not see that side to us.
Adults today go through real struggles, and change is a big thing in life, and that's okay.
Then I think they'll be more comfortable with it when it hits them or when they have to go through something difficult.
But I would just say reach out to the people that you love and care about, and even if it's been a while, just check in.
And those little check ins those little hey, how are you?
How are you really?
It can make a huge difference in the lives of many youth.
All the youth.
I would like you all to respond to this.
What do you need from adults?
I think that one thin I wish that adults understood on mental health is that, like mental health, it's not just like about being sad or being depressed.
Like we need to expand our understanding of it.
It can also be like in feeling of like anger and lashing out.
Like, I think that we need to like open our eyes and mental health because I think that when I was growing up, I had good grades in school, so clearly I didn't have any mental health concerns, but that was not the case at all.
So I think that when adults, they learn more and want to educate themselves than they will.
And I think that what youth really need is like a supportive adult that like, wants to open that space for them.
Yeah.
In agreement and kind of in addition to with what Stacy just said, you know, it obviously depends on the age of youth that we're looking at.
I nanny and college, and I can tell you right now that the development of a 20 year old, when their parents check in an say, hey, how is college going versus asking a four year old hey, how was kindergarten today?
They're going to have a different response, right?
And so, you know, depending on what age those youth members are, can kind of dete the questions that we're asking to those environments, whether it's, hey, I saw this in the news, is everything okay at school or how was your day in, sa four year old says it was good.
Then parent asks, what was the best part?
What was your role in thought of that day?
Not just ending it on?
Oh, I'm fine on my day was good.
Kind of taking those next steps into asking the harder questions or even just sharing your own experiences of yeah, my day was good too, but I had a conflict.
I had a hard conversation with somebody at work, or opening that door for them helps them reach out to you.
I said, have resilience.
I think that especially with what's going on right now, it feels very weak.
I feel like we don't really have as much communit because there's so much, there's so much trying to break that down.
But I think that resilience is so important because at the end of the day, I think we're all fighting for the same mission.
We're all trying to accomplish the same goal.
And I think that we're all stronger together.
And that's what really, really had to push for.
You can't make decisions about youth without them.
And this goes for anyone working with youth.
This goes for the policymakers, the influencers, the parents.
Like if you are, if you are interacting with youth, you need to involve them.
Because I think a big issue is that youth aren't involved and our voices are constantly being taken from us.
But I think that when you open that conversation and allow for youth to have their own, their own agency in their voice, it really does change the conversation about mental health.
Again, we want to remind you support is available.
The 988 Colorado Mental Health line is available for free.
Immediate human support 24 seven.
You can call, text or live chat with 988 today.
They're ready to listen.
You can also visit I matter colorado.org Colorado youth can receive up to six free therapy sessions through I matter with English and Spanish language services available.
Visit I matter colorado.org to learn more.
Thank you for joining us for Decode Colorado.
We hope you've come away with a deeper understanding of teen mental health here in Colorado.
To watch any part of this presentation again, visit PBS 12.org, check out our PBS passport app or visit our YouTube channel.
Until next time, I'm Tom Austin for PBS 12.
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