As Monument Mountain Regional High School’s Adjustment Counselor, Pam Morehouse is accustomed to helping her students with anxiety and depression. This year, though, she and her colleagues are seeing something new, and troubling. “We have kids who have so much anxiety that they’re having trouble coming into the building.” She estimates that as many as 20 percent of the high school’s population could fall into this category on any given day.
Her observations are borne out by the data. On the Prevention Needs Assessment Survey (PNAS) administered at Monument and at Mount Everett High Schools in winter 2021, the number of 8th graders reporting depressive symptoms went up more than 30 percent between 2019 and 2021, more than 20 percent among 10th graders, and 38 percent among 12th graders. A quarter of 8th graders, and nearly a third of 10th and 12th graders agreed with the statement, “Sometimes I think that life is not worth it.” (These numbers are more or less in line with the rest of the county.)
The damage inflicted on the mental health of teenagers by nearly two years of isolation and its attendant disruption to social and educational development is just coming to the forefront of public consciousness. One local effort is aiming to get the word out to caregivers that, even if it feels like they’re navigating treacherous waters alone, there is help. On Tuesday, Feb. 15, from 6:30–8 p.m., caregivers are invited to attend an educational Zoom meeting sponsored by the parent and caregiver subcommittee of the Southern Berkshire Community Health Coalition (SBCHC), a program of the Railroad Street Youth Project (RSYP). The meeting will include a panel featuring Deb Buccino, pediatrician at MACONY, Dan Knauss, staff psychologist at Austen Riggs, Donna Elmendorf, director of the Therapeutic Community Program at Austen Riggs, and Jane Tillman, director of the Erickson Institute.
Their goal, according to Joshua Briggs, coordinator of the parent and caregiver subcommittee, and moderator for the meeting, “is to help parents feel they have a few more tools in their toolbox in terms of understanding what might be happening with the young people in their lives — what’s truly suicidal danger and what’s not, for instance — and tips for how to have positive ongoing conversations and a better understanding of resources in community.”
The mission of the Railroad Street Youth Project is “to empower young people by supporting the creation of youth-generated activities that promote self-worth, responsibility, and intergenerational respect and communication.” SBCHC, per its original mandate nearly 20 years ago, works “for a community-wide approach to reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors that reduce the high rates of alcohol and drug use among South County teens.” Membership is made up of youth and adults representing school, health, law enforcement, cultural, elected officials, social service and social justice organizations. The efforts of the Coalition in recent years have included parent support groups, a video series on talking to teens, and two 2019 forums, on marijuana and the science of drug and alcohol use in youth.
Importantly, SBCHC also helps implement and analyze results from the biennial PNAS, a health and behavior survey given to all 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders in Berkshire County public schools, which tracks drug and alcohol use as well as the risk and protective factors that affect them. The two priorities identified by the coalition in its 2016 strategic plan were related to the risk factors found through the survey to be most prevalent: low perception of risk of using drugs and alcohol among youth, and community norms and family attitudes that favor substance use in youth. Funding for the SBCHC currently comes through a Massachusetts Department of Public Health grant called Massachusetts Collaborative for Action, Leadership and Learning (MassCall3) allocated for Sheffield, Egremont, Great Barrington, and Stockbridge.
Z Estime is the coalition’s new coordinator, the latest in a series of roles that began 11 years ago when they were a 14-year-old constituent with RSYP. Estime’s initial work will include a revisiting of the strategic plan, starting with a thorough needs assessments, to which the Zoom meeting will contribute. “What we keep hearing across the board is mental health support,” they said. “We need to center mental health in our substance prevention work.”
Austen Riggs started its consulting relationship with Berkshire Hills Regional School District through Muddy Brook’s Collaborative Care project, undertaken in 2014 by a team that included then-principal Mary Berle. Though both Berle and her then-Vice Principal Nan Thompson have since left the school, they remain on what’s now called the South Berkshire Collaborative Care Team in leadership roles, along with Elmendorf and Buccino.
Tillman and Elmendorf hope the February 15th parent forum will not be only a didactic opportunity, but also a chance for them to hear about candid struggles from the horses’ mouths. A lasting benefit could be that caregivers serve as role models for their kids, showing them that, though seeking help is sometimes stigmatized, it pays to push past the stigma.
Said Elmendorf, “One of the overarching aims is to bring people together to hear from the families, rather than us guessing about what it is we should really focus on, and try to be responsive in the moment. The parents showing up for such an event is a step toward a different kind of integration with the community and resources. There are ways that that trickles down to children, to see their parents trying to better educate themselves.”
Community members who may not have struggling kids themselves may want to attend the forum to learn how to support their friends who do. Tillman wants to spark conversations around the question, “How do we support members of our community who aren’t coming to the table right away for help, but we’re interacting with day to day?”
In terms of the precise nature of what has hit young people the hardest in the past two years of the pandemic, Tillman said, “What we hear from young adults at Riggs is it’s a disruption in relationships, the disruption of routine. The disruption in a developmental process has been huge and has affected some more than others.”
Those interested in getting involved in the work of the coalition, or finding out more about the February 15th forum, should contact Z Estime, at z@rsyp.org
