MCH Bridges: The Official AMCHP Podcast

Episode #15: Youth Perspectives on Mental Health: Supporting the Next Generation

• AMCHP

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Listen to this MCH Bridges episode to hear three members of The Adolescent Champion Teen Advisory Council (TAC TAC), Melanie Avila, Fanta Guindo, and Yeina Han, share what adolescent and young adult mental health looks like in their communities, what they have experienced, and what needs to change. This episode talks about important concepts like positive youth development, youth-friendly services, and culturally competent care. It also identifies strategies for addressing barriers to youth seeking and accessing mental health services.

This episode discusses mental health issues and mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis, please dial 988 immediately to call the Suicide Prevention Lifeline or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741. Additionally, the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline provides support before, during, and after pregnancy. Call or text 1-833-9-HELP4MOMS (1-833-943-5746). TTY users can use a preferred relay service or dial 711 and then 988 or 1-833-943-5746. Both services are free, confidential, and available 24/7.

Resources:

·      AMCHP’s Adolescent Health Current Initiatives

·       Adolescent Health Initiative

·       The Adolescent Champion Teen Advisory Council (TAC TAC)

·       Emerging Topical Issues in Adolescent and Young Adult Mental Health (AMCHP Learning Module)

·       Innovation in Mental Health Service Delivery (AMCHP Learning Module) 

·       Integration of Mental Health into Primary Care for Adolescents and Young Adults (AMCHP Learning Module)

·       MCH Workforce Capacity and Skillsets for Improving Mental Health Care Systems for AYAs (AMCHP Learning Module) 

·       Screen to Intervene (AMCHP’s blog dedicated to Adolescent & Young Adult Mental Health)

Maura Leahy:

Welcome to MCH Bridges, where we lift up innovative ideas and inspiring stories from people in the maternal and child health field. My name is Maura Leahy. I'm a program manager for Child and Adolescent Health at AMCHP and your MCH Bridges host. Before we get started, I'd like to mention that this episode discusses mental health issues and mentions suicide. If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a crisis, please call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988. You can also call or text the National Maternal Mental Health hotline that provides support before, during, and after pregnancy. More information about these resources can be found in the show notes. All of us remember adolescent and young adult years. If I asked you to think back to those years of your life from ages 10 to 25, what comes to mind? What do you remember? Who do you remember? Adolescence can include some of your best memories and can also be a time of ups and downs. When I think back to my adolescence, I remember feeling a little out of place, especially from the age of 12 to 17. I struggled socially in school, although I had a really strong small group of friends through Irish dance. When I went to college, I finally felt like I really belonged somewhere and came into my own only to struggle my sophomore year with an eating disorder and depression. When I look back on those years now, one thing that sticks out to me is that I never really had a name for what I was struggling with besides my medical diagnoses. Mental health wasn't a term that was used as commonly as it is today. I knew I had depression, but initially I never saw it as a part of my more holistic mental health and wellbeing. These days, mental health status is something that seems to be talked about widely on a daily basis. It's a positive thing that it's become a more common aspect of our lives in everyday conversation. But when it comes to adolescent and young adult mental health, news coverage typically paints a dismal or negative picture without offering many strategies on how to help young people cope. And our young people are struggling, and it's not just due to covid, although that definitely plays a major role. So much has changed since we were adolescents and young adults that I can only fathom what it's like for young people navigating new pressures I didn't have to deal with like social media. There are so many issues that are negatively affecting our young people and their mental health, like increased gun violence, racism, anti LGBTQ+ legislation, climate change, access to safe housing. The list goes on longer than it should, and many of these issues are interconnected and related to social determinants of health. I wanted to hear from the experts themselves, young people, to understand what youth mental health looks like in their communities, what they have experienced, and what needs to change. I sat down with three members of The Adolescent Champion Teen Advisory Council, or TAC TAC that serves as an advisory council to the Adolescent Health Initiative. The Adolescent Health Initiative is a program of community health services at Michigan Medicine that works to transform the healthcare landscape to optimize adolescent health and wellbeing through practice improvement, education, research, and youth and community engagement. I'll let today's guests, Yeina, Melanie, and Fanta introduce themselves.

Yeina Han:

Hi, my name's Yeina. Um, my preferred pronouns are she, her. I initially joined TAC TAC because I needed somewhere where I could show my leadership within the community, and I really want to further my studies in medicine overall. And I thought that this was a perfect opportunity to work with such a wide range group of people.

Melanie Avila:

Hi, name is Melanie. My pronouns are she her. I wanna thank you so much for having me today. I joined TAC TAC because I have a deep passion for the medical community, and I thought that TAC TAC perfectly incorporated my morals and what I stand for. And I really wanted to work with them and make a difference in my community.

Fanta Guindo:

Hi, my name is Fanta. My pronoun is Are she Hers. And I joined TAC TAC because I realized that I wanted to spark change within the community, and I felt like my experiences was a step in me contributing.

Maura Leahy:

For the past couple of years, we've been seeing news story after news story about the mental health of young people and how it's worsened during covid, headlines like "Pandemic Youth Mental Health toll Unprecedented,""Youth Mental Health Crisis is the next wave of the pandemic" and "mental health struggles are driving more college students to consider dropping out." A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that young people's mental health status has actually been on the decline for a while now. Girls, LGBQ+ students (they didn't ask if students were transgender) and students belonging to certain racial and ethnic groups are experiencing significantly worse mental health. For example, almost three in five girls experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness in the past year. Nearly one quarter of LGBQ+ students attempted suicide in the last year. American Indian or Alaskan native students were more likely to ever been forced to have sex, and reported suicide attempts were higher among Black students. I feel like reading things in a report isn't the same as firsthand experiences that give you a person-to-person connection. The fact that this is someone's life and not just another data point. Melanie, Fanta, and Yeina shared what mental health in their communities and among their peers looks like.

Melanie Avila:

Mental health, I've definitely seen it increase significantly, especially with the people around me, but it hasn't been looked down upon. It's actually become very normalized. My friends aren't ashamed of their struggles and are open with the help that they receive, but mental health has been normalized to an extent where no one takes it the seriously the way it should be taken. Lots of teenagers, especially like my friends, we joke about our mental health and in some cases, you know, suicide. And in the perfect world, uh, that mental health would be treated as a serious illness and what that needs immediate help. Uh, sometimes the invisible burdens are the hardest to bear, but I understand, especially as a teen, that humor is one of the many ways that we cope.

Fanta Guindo:

There's like many different types of teenagers and like how they deal with mental health issues. There's adolescents that hide it. There's some that you can see on the outside. Sometimes I can tell when someone is hiding and going through it, especially like in school when they say they feel good, but in reality there's like a mask covering how they really feel. And there might also be times where people might think that a teenager is acting normal or just think that it might just be hormones. But I think that it's best and it's crucial to look at their behavior and think about how their mental health could be affecting them. It could just be like the littlest things that you might not think is a big deal, but in reality it's affecting them a lot harder. Some of the little signs could be, you know, them being irritable, which a lot of people tend to overlook saying like, oh, it's just teenage hormones. It could just be boredom, not wanting to do things, changing eating and sleeping habits, resisting help or treatment or not talking or like staring into space at times. And you know, not wanting to be social or not caring about life or school. And I think that these are some of the things that I see within my peers around me, but also some things that I've experienced myself

Yeina Han:

throughout my experience, going through COVID and just going through high school in general, I have been able to see a lot of teens and young adults go through different types of mental health issues. And the most consistent pattern I've seen is the people that are diagnosed with mental health have a feeling of like they're lost and not knowing where to go when they need a sense of help and a sense of security within the community. And I think that along with that, It causes them to go deeper into their mental health. I think also on top of that, without like this kind of help being accessible, it's just a pattern of who we can trust within our community and having that accessibility within our community. It's super critical to make it aware that. Being not okay is okay. Like Melanie said, it's just we have to normalize it now and we just have to make it so normalized where we want to educate ourselves on the issue.

Maura Leahy:

Part of what motivated our guests to join TAC TAC was their lived experiences, and I'm grateful that all three shared experiences that affected their mental health, out of which a few different common themes emerge. First, let's hear from Melanie about her experience moving from Miami to Michigan, the impact it had on her mental health, seeking out support for dealing with her mental health challenges, and how that support suddenly ended

Melanie Avila:

around, I wanna say 2017, 2018, I moved to Michigan from Miami, Florida. Miami, Florida was filled to the brim with Cubans, and I was surrounded by my culture, my food, my heritage, my friends, and my family as well. So when I moved to Michigan due to my dad's job, I felt completely lost. Michigan was different every, every way from Miami. I mean, the weather in itself was a lot to get used to, and I had never seen snow. So it was a really big change for me, and one of the things that my parents take very seriously are academics. They do not mess around with academics, but I was growing very depressed because I felt so alone and I felt like I was isolated from the world and everybody was just different. They treated me different. They would make fun of me for the way I spoke. And this definitely reflected on my grades, and my parents just did not know how to deal with my mental health, especially for somebody so young, because I was in sixth grade around this time, and they thought that, oh, I'm a sixth grader, I'm 13. I can't feel depression. That's not a thing. I'm too young. One time, where my grades were plummeting, a teacher spoke to me and they said, Hey, what's going on? Are you okay? And I really liked this teacher and I trusted her. And I explained to her, no, I'm really depressed. I feel alone. I barely have any friends. So they recommended me to the school's clinic. And to be in this clinic, uh, you have to be recommended by a teacher or a staff. It was a luxury because they had professional therapists in this school clinic. And I met with this sweet woman and we spoke frequently about what was going on with me and I felt really heard and I finally was feeling okay and my grades started getting better and I felt okay Since I couldn't make an appointment with her, I trusted that she would like frequently check up on me, but then one time she just completely stopped checking up on me and I remember questioning did I do something? Did I say something, was something wrong? And I would make a lot of excuses for her. I didn't know what was going on. Maybe she left, maybe she, I don't know, got sucked up by a volcano. That's what I assumed. But I would see her in the hallways and she didn't say hi. Didn't initiate conversation with me, and I felt so lost, so confused because she created the safe space for me and then destroyed it. I would talk to her for hours and hours about what I was feeling, what was going on at home. And one of the best things that she did was she didn't offer me advice that I know I wouldn't do. She just offered me a companion, an ear, a shoulder to cry on. Just just gave me little bits and pieces of, you're okay, you got this, I'm proud of you. And then one day it just stopped. And I don't know what I did, what I said, but for her to betray my trust like that when I opened up, especially being so young, I have never seeked out help after her again because now I'm afraid like history's just gonna repeat itself. But I'm grateful for that experience because I had someone to listen to me, even if it's just short while there was someone there for me and it improved me. But at the same time she decided for herself when I didn't need any more help, then that like wasn't okay.

Maura Leahy:

A few things jump out to me. Melanie's parents assumed because she was just 13 at the time, that what she was feeling wouldn't be depression, when those of us working in the public health field know that mental health is something that impacts all of us across the life course. For example, now we know that about 16% of children under six years old have significant mental health problems that require clinical care early in life. There is an entire field dedicated to infant and early childhood mental health. Adults can also minimize that adolescents and young adults can and do understand what their mental health is. They don't see the agency that young people already have. Agency is one of the core components in positive youth development, a framework that many Title V maternal and child health programs implement in their adolescent and young adult programming. Another concept in positive youth development is that of an enabling environment. Melanie originally had a safe space with this therapist to talk about her issues, but this was pulled out from under her when the therapist stopped communicating and following up with her out of nowhere. It also touches on the importance of young people having trusted adults in their lives, and what happens when that trust is broken, something that adults might not understand the magnitude of. But several Title V MCH programs seek to address the importance of trusted youth adult partnerships, and several states have created state performance measures around these partnerships. For example, a state performance measure in Alaska is the percent of students that report they could seek help from three or more adults besides their parents if they had an important question affecting their life. A state performance measure in South Dakota is the percentage of adolescents who would talk to a trusted adult if someone they were going out with makes them uncomfortable or hurts them. A state performance measure in Washington includes the percentage of 10th grade students who have an adult to talk to when they feel sad or hopeless. Fanta had an experience similar to Melanie's: finding someone who you thought was a trusted adult, only to have that trust betrayed.

Fanta Guindo:

I was like going through mental health issues for quite a few years. I had therapy and I just felt like therapy wasn't enough. For me, so, um, after years of being like against medication, I just thought to myself, you know, I should probably give it a try. I went to my primary care doctor's office to see if I could get on medication, but I was also hoping that they wouldn't tell my parents. My parents are very strict immigrants and they don't really understand the concept of mental health. So my doctor gave me like depression and anxiety questionnaire to fill out and she came back in the room and told me that, you know, she feels like medication would be helpful and it would be best. So I'm just like, okay. Yeah, like I'm kind of excited and I told her that I don't want her to tell my parents. And then she like said, she'll see what she can do about that. So you know, she left the room and then she came back in and then she said she's able to not tell my parents. And then she said, we can proceed with the medication. And like at that point we were already talking about like which pharmacy to send the medication to. And I was really excited that my parents wouldn't be able to know about this. So after that, she did like a 180 and told me that she has to tell my parents and told them, and I was shocked. I was really upset. And I felt like my trust was broken with the doctors just in general. And I kept thinking to myself like, oh, I'm never gonna tell a doctor anything ever again. I felt like, you know, as if my needs and my wants didn't matter and like there was like no respect for me in this situation. I was just upset and kind of just blacked out and didn't really understand anything she was just saying. So, After that, I went home and like expecting the worst and then the worst happened. My mom and dad said no to the medication cuz they had to agree if they wanted to put me on and they said no. Yeah, I cried a lot and I kind of just like blamed myself. I was like, why did I go to the doctors like, I'm never doing this again. Like, I'm never ever trusting a doctor again.

Maura Leahy:

My heart hurt to hear Fanta to describe this experience. I am not sure if this provider just wasn't aware of rules regarding confidentiality and parental consent, or failed to accurately acknowledge upfront what is confidential within the scope of the visit and referral. But that needs to be something any provider who cares for young people is fully aware of and transparent about, so they don't tell young people one thing and then do something entirely different. There are already plenty of barriers to youth seeking care: lack of transportation, cost or insurance requirements, provider bias, that we don't want unclear communication about confidentiality requirements to be another. Many Title V programs have expertise on this and work with providers to increase their understanding of what can and can't be confidential in terms of treating minors. Confidentiality ties into youth friendly services and how important it is that services are youth friendly, meaning that they are accessible to youth, create an environment that is welcoming, provide confidential services where applicable, and work with youth to improve services. It also connects to provider training and ensuring that providers who are serving youth are trained to do so. As a former Leadership Education in Adolescent Health trainee, I completed a nine month cross-sector training program that included public health, medicine, nutrition, psychology, and social work trainees. But by no means is this the norm. More attention and resources are needed to train and grow the adolescent and young adult health workforce across sectors. Lastly, I want to highlight something that Fanta mentioned, and that is that as the child of immigrants, her parents have a very different understanding of what mental health is. Melanie and Yeina are also the children of immigrants, and we need to be talking more about how common this experience is and what it's like for youth who are straddling different cultures and how this connects to providing culturally competent care. We still have a long ways to go here as we have to acknowledge that many providers don't look like the young people they serve, that they don't understand the nuances and complexities of all that young people are balancing, and how from a systems level, we need to be ensuring all youth serving professionals are trained in culturally competent and trauma sensitive care. It's finding a trusted adult, but one who really can also understand where you're coming from. Yeina and Melanie shared what that can look like and feel like.

Yeina Han:

That's something that's not spoken on a lot. It's so crucial. Not even just in the mental health area, but in just like healthcare in general. Being able to see like a diverse group of people helping one another. I think that it allows us to be more acceptive of each other. It's so common that we go to a office and we just see one face or just one race, and we're just kind of like, Okay. And we might get this sense of feeling like, oh, like are they still checking up on me? Did they forget about me? Am I still thought about? It's like that sense of feeling that other people don't even think that people have, but we do. And it's just, it's just not spoken up about because the people that are taking care of us aren't the people that are specifically going through the paths that we have been down

Melanie Avila:

in the last TAC TAC conference, I said this, that I, my best friend has to stop going to therapy because, um, she's African American and her white therapist just could not relate or could not offer support for what she was going through. And when she told me this, I felt like my head had exploded because I had never thought about that. I never thought that some therapists would not be able to help you because they don't share the same race and the same experiences as you. It's such common sense, but I never thought about it and it's true. How is another race gonna relate to what I've gone through when we don't share the same life? We don't share the same culture or ethnicity? Not really- it doesn't have to be the same culture, but at least an idea of it. And yeina again, what she mentioned was great because you see one phase. How is that phase going to relate with what you've gone through?

Maura Leahy:

Going back to the lived experiences of our guests, Yeina shared a specific experience that involved a survey on mental health that was conducted at her school and includes the themes we've already heard about trust and confidentiality.

Yeina Han:

It was just like a normal school day, and during one of my like periods, they were basically asking us to fill out a form, and the form was like through the computer and our teacher was like, Hey, like this form is required. Just fill it out to get it done. And knowing every high school student out there, I kind of just like did the form as expected. I just kind of flew through it because I had other work to do, obviously, and as I was doing the form, it was asking questions about like, how are you feeling throughout this year? Have you gotten support? What have you been going through? And like it was nice to see that this form was asking these kind of consistent questions. I didn't think much about it because, I mean, personally, I never had to go seek out help for mental health, um, because I had a very good support system in my home, which is such a privilege to have. But then a few weeks later, my mom's email is like logged in in my phone and basically she got an email from the school saying like, Hey, your daughter did this form and we think she's depressed and we think she needs help. And I mean, I was, I was appalled when they first did that because I was just like, first of all, like I'm not saying like being depressed or like being anxious in school is a bad thing. Like everyone goes through it. But I'm saying like, you should have contacted me first before you contacted my parents. Because I mean, within a, uh, Fanta's situation, like it's the same, like what if your parents aren't educated with mental health or they're not educated with the support system, it becomes such an issue to contact our parents first before you contact us, because our parents could be the ones that are causing our mental health. Our parents could be the roadblock that is within our community. Because they're just restricting us in some way because they're our parents. They were doing the best they could with that form, but I was just kind of like, why would you contact them before you contact me? And this comes back to what I said before, like the accessibility for asking for help and it being confidential is so hard to do because we're minors. And I think that that is something that I speak up about because it is such an issue within not just myself, but within people that actually have mental health issues and are going through something specifically.

Maura Leahy:

I asked Fanta, Yeina, and Melanie what they wish had been different in each of their experiences and more holistically how they'd like adults to do a better job of gaining and respecting the trust of young people.

Fanta Guindo:

For my personal situation that happened, I wish she knew what the, like the laws and like the regulations and like having to tell the parent, parent first be before like prescribing medication. Because if she told me that before, like I got the adrenaline of like, being happy that I'm, you know, finally going to medication and like, me going home and having to deal with my parents, like I would've just avoided that situation. And just like more in general, I want to see more inclusive support for like many different situations that teenagers are going through. Not all teenagers are the same, so the same treatment or actions towards helping them feel supported is not going to work for all. Like for instance, like you can ask. An adolescent if they need support and they could potentially say yes, but what about the adolescents who you are worried about and clearly, you know, they show signs of like mental health problems. They could say no, but still be in need of mental health support. They're afraid to say yes because of like their parents or they might not trust you because of past experiences. I want parents, teachers, educators, you know, mental health professionals to like try to understand the adolescent or the individual as a person, and break down the reasons on why they might be afraid to say yes for support. And then after you get to know them as a person, try to accommodate that so the adolescent feels supported and doesn't feel afraid working one-on-one and trying to understand the individual, like their home life, you know, why they might act the way they do. And you know, being patient with them helps tremendously and there just needs to be also more inclusive resources too for all different types of teenagers and experiences.

Yeina Han:

And I can kind of bounce off on that. I think another important thing that she mentioned is that having that connection with whoever's supporting you is super critical. With all these experiences that we've had, it's so important to have that trust within who you're reaching out for help, because whoever, you're reaching out for help, you're asking for a solution, or you're asking for, how can I do this, or what should I do with the situation? And I think on top of that connection is so important, but also having someone that's educated within the topic is so important as well. If I think about my school right now, we have all these supporters and all these teachers and peers that are saying that, Hey, we're here. We're here for you within mental health, but how can we trust that you actually know what you're talking about? How can we trust that my peers are able to keep this confidential and keep this secret? My biggest thing that I want to change within our community itself is just being more cautious and being more aware of the mental health community and like the mental health issue itself, allowing more education within parents and within the school, because I think that from there, The parents can teach the kids and the kids can also reach out to other kids that are dealing with mental health. If we expand that education, we're gonna be able to reach a more broad aspect and solve these issues more quickly.

Melanie Avila:

Yeah, and I definitely agree with Yeina and Fanta. Back in my situation, I feel like if my then therapist, if she would've just told me, Why she had to stop seeing me instead of completely ghosting me. It would've really helped me, especially in the future. It would've created a path for me where I had this positive experience with a therapist. So I have that power now to seek out other help, but she completely ruined that experience for me because she betrayed my trust, and that is something we all agree on that the most crucial thing about having mental health support is just to create a safe space with trust. And Yeina also mentioned something that my school has implemented, which is the peer-to-peer thing where we have peers that, you know, we're here for you, we offer you support, we offer you an ear, but how do we know that that is confidential, especially with other adolescents. So how do we know you're not going to go ahead and tell your friends that Melanie said this, or Yeina said that? What I would like to see, especially now I'm in high school, I'm a junior. Uh, people say that junior year is the most stressful time for a high schooler. I've only ever had one teacher, and I absolutely adore him. To bits that genuinely checks up with his students, even if it's just, hi Melanie, how are you today? Every morning he goes, hi Melanie, how are you today? Hi blank. How are you today? And these kids, they feel comfortable enough to tell him, I don't feel so good today. And he genuinely listens to you and he takes the time out of his day to give you advice, to help you, to support you. But then I have other teachers that don't bother even introducing themselves, saying greeting in the morning, and they just go straight to the lesson. Don't say goodbye after class. And you know, we spend eight hours a day in school. School's like our second home. Basically, we need to create the safe space. We're surrounded by adults and one of the reasons why we talk to adults more than we talk to our friends is because adults, they have more experience in life than we do. They have been through more things than we have. Who knows if they've gone through similar things than we, and they can give us like, this is how I got through it, or This is how you will get through it. I know cuz of experience. So definitely a common theme is just create a safe space. Make us be able to talk to you by saying, Hey, I'm just here for you. I'm not gonna tell anybody.

Maura Leahy:

I want to take a minute to call out Something that Melanie mentioned, how so much of young people's time is spent in school. That school is an ideal space where we can bring needed services to youth. That's why some schools have school-based health centers. These are evidence-based strategies that we know improve the physical and emotional health of students. Our partners at the School-Based Health Alliance sum up the potential of school-based health centers as "a powerful tool for achieving health equity among children and adolescents who unjustly experience disparities in outcomes simply because of their race, ethnicity, or family income. It's also a common sense idea gaining currency across the country, place critically needed services like medical, behavioral, dental, and vision care directly in schools so that all young people, no matter their zip code, have equal opportunity to learn and grow." these are intentionally designed to be youth friendly and are infused with a positive youth development lens. They're also a way to address some of the barriers mentioned earlier in this episode around lack of providers who are trained to work with young people from strengths-based approaches. I asked Melanie, Yeina, and Fanta what else they see that needs to change so adolescents and young adults have more equitable opportunities to reach their best mental health. What would a perfect world for adolescent and young adult mental health look like? Who needs to be involved in the change?

Melanie Avila:

Yeina mentioned this previously and it was, access to support is very limited and it's not easily accessible, especially for me. Back in sixth grade when I first was seeing my therapist, I had to get, uh, requested by a teacher and staff to even be in that clinic. Students couldn't just walk in and sign themselves up. You had to talk to an adult, and then that adult had to send you to that clinic. But some students, they didn't have what I had with teachers where I trusted my teacher enough to talk to her. So what do we do about the kids that don't have a trusted teacher to talk to and are struggling with mental health where they just meant to be brushed to the side? Especially for TAC TAC the our last conference meeting, we went over our rights because we didn't know what our rights were and we were in tack. Which is incredible. How do we get the support we need when we don't know what support there is? Even though we've talked about our experiences talking to an adult, what more can we do than, besides the fact of talking to an adult? Is there anything else for me. I feel like we can all, coming from immigrant families, therapy and medication is looked down severely, like severely, severely, severely. If I come to my mom and I tell her I'm going to therapy, She will lose it, absolutely lose it. Oh, was I a bad mom? Whatever, whatever. So that's not available to us. So what is? How can we accommodate everybody? That will be my perfect world. Everybody has reliable and some way of getting help and easy access to resources.

Yeina Han:

I. I think Melanie, she just worded it so perfectly. I think it's so funny how all three of us were kind of all coming from an immigrant family. Again, if I said something like that to my mom, my mom would be like, go drink some water. Go take a nap. Like it's like something that is so common within minorities in general. And I think on top of that, I think in TAC TAC we were talking about like the different identities we present ourselves. My biggest one is like being a minority and then also being a youth. And I think those two are the biggest things that impact us with getting help in this issue. And I think that in a perfect world for me, I would like to see, um, more acceptance of everyone and just have making it easier for everyone to reach out for that specific help. In another world, something we could also improve on is it's, it's scientifically proven for, um, young adults or adolescents that deal with mental health. That peer-to-peer connection is, it's scientifically proven and it's, it's great, but I think that we need to work on making sure that whoever's helping that peer is educated. From a professional doctor or from a professional that knows a lot about this field, so we kind of like, like seep into one another and just create a bigger community where everyone is educated.

Fanta Guindo:

For me, in a perfect world, I feel like what adults are just like parents are just like public health. I know I might be a little bit creative on this, but I wish there was clubs ran by students that parents could come to and get educated on like experiences and like what's going on in mental health.

Maura Leahy:

I asked Fanta, Yeina, and Melanie if there was anything else they wanted to share with our listeners today.

Fanta Guindo:

I hope that our experiences were eye-opening to the audience. With this generation, there's lots of adolescents that are unfortunately skilled at, you know, hiding their mental health. So what I went to emphasize is that sometimes with adolescent mental health, you cannot see their mental health issues physically outside of them. So they might seem like a happy person, but in reality, they could be hurting inside.

Yeina Han:

Thank you guys so much for listening and giving us an opportunity to speak up about this. It was so wonderful to kind of be able to communicate through someone to a bigger audience, like when you rip off a bandaid like that feeling, um, it felt like that today. So thank you guys so much.

Melanie Avila:

Yeah, thank you. This was really very fun. Once in a lifetime, just like Yeina said. It really does feel like a weight just got lifted off, and I really do hope that some people or some listeners, they take into what we send into consideration and implement them and help those that really need their help.

Maura Leahy:

It wasn't just our guests that had that weight being lifted because I most definitely was feeling the same way. I'm so grateful for getting to have such an honest conversation about mental health and can't thank Fanta, Yeina and Melanie enough for sharing their lived experience and expertise. For me, the episode identified a number of areas where we have much room to grow to improve the systems that support young people, because that's where so much of the change needs to happen. We need the systems to better conform to adolescent and young adult needs, not the other way around as it's been historically. We talked about the importance of having professionals who are trained in supporting young people, and our listeners may not know that a majority of states and jurisdictions have a designated state adolescent health coordinator working within their Title V agency. These state adolescent health coordinators are a prime example of professionals who are essential resources and possess key expertise in adolescent and young adult health. School-based health centers are another one and many MCH programs collaborate with them in their child and adolescent health programming. Mostly, I'm leaving this episode feeling energized after getting to talk with current and future leaders. I'm hopeful for the future, and I hope you are too. Thank you all for joining us on this MCH Bridges. You can find the transcript of the episode@www.mnchbridges.org. The show notes for the episode include more information about some of the resources and organizations mentioned. Be sure to follow AM chip on social media. We're on Twitter and Instagram. At DC underscore A M C H P. We hope this episode created some new connections for you. Stay well, and I hope our paths cross on the next MCH H Bridges. This project is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration, or HRSA of the US Department of Health and Human Services. For H H s as part of an award totaling $1,963,039 with 0% financed with non-governmental sources. This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of. Nor should any endorsements be inferred by hrsa, hhs, or the US government.