Kimberly Gill knows what it's like to struggle with mental health and have nowhere to turn for help.
Gil, a 16-year-old sophomore at Social Justice High School in Bushwick, Brooklyn, immigrated to the United States as a child and struggled to adjust. She often felt that she could not talk to her family about what she was experiencing. Her girlfriend, Gill, said this was a well-known story among her classmates.
“Many of our students have lost loved ones. They have experienced sexual harassment, sexual assault, depression, self-harm, etc.,” Gill said. However, when you bring up such topics with family members, many teens worry that they won't believe you or cooperate with you.
That sense of isolation spurred Gil and seven classmates to come up with a new approach to supporting students' mental health. It's about creating spaces in schools where kids can share what they're going through with their fellow teens.
Gil is a member of the school team for the second annual Aspen Challenge, a youth version of Colorado's famous Aspen Ideas Festival. Her team of public school teenagers chooses a pressing social problem and comes up with an innovative solution. Last month, her team joined 20 high schools in presenting ideas on issues ranging from mental health to rats to immigration.
Gill's team chose to tackle the ongoing youth mental health crisis in schools, filling empty school classrooms with adult supervision and staffing teenage volunteers trained as peer counselors. It has been remodeled into a wellness space with
“This is a way for them to express their true feelings without shame,” Gill said.
In the first few days since the space opened last month, students have been coming in to vent about their grades and stress at the end of the grading period, sophomore Grace Sopersaud, 16, said.
Rats, immigration, discrimination
Students participating in this year's competition chose from five potential issues: mental health, immigration, discrimination and prejudice, the environment, and rats.
The top honor, which includes a trip to this summer's Aspen Festival, went to students from Multicultural High School, a school for recent immigrants in Cypress Hills. The team developed a website and workshops to connect newly arrived immigrant students with resources such as legal assistance, assistance with financial aid applications, and access to free day care.
Brooklyn Technical High School's team, the Brooklyn Erraticators, received an honorable mention for their multifaceted plan to enlist the city's largest high schools to reduce Fort Greene's rat population.
The plan included an educational campaign encouraging students to dispose of food scraps in compost bins, student organizers said. Compost bins are taken out more often than other trash and are less likely to attract rats.
Meanwhile, teens at Sunset Park High School are building a series of “Know Your Rights” books for undocumented children and adults, drawing on their own experiences of seeing immigrant families face discrimination. Designed a workshop.
Sophomore Lizbeth Acevedo, 16, said she watched her immigrant parents face discrimination from an early age. “So I think this was a way for us to eliminate discrimination.”
Teens talk to parents about mental health
The topic that drew the most attention from Teen Problem Solvers was the ongoing youth mental health crisis. The issue prompted city officials to take a unique and innovative approach: creating a free online therapy program for children ages 13 to 17.
Teams working on mental health at this year's Aspen Challenge spoke about the prevalence of anxiety, depression, and stress among their peers, and the lack of understanding or even direct opposition from parents to seeking treatment.
The team at Brooklyn Law and Technical High School focused on one aspect of their plan: educating parents about teens and mental health. The group suggested involving parents in workshops to help alleviate some of the stigma, misconceptions and fears that adults can bring into conversations about children's mental health.
“When I told my family about the time I wanted to go to therapy and felt like I needed help, they told me I was crazy, that I needed medication to calm me down, and I felt like he was saying I'm going to treat him. Throw me in a psych ward,'' said Ariana Garcia, a 17-year-old fourth-grader.
Year 11 student Harjullah Ali, 16, said parents often still carry their own burdens and traumas, which can affect their perceptions of their children's mental health. added. “It's all about how we can support them so they can break the cycle,” she said.
Gill, a student at Bushwick High School for Social Justice, said she wasn't too focused on the results of the contest.
“To be honest, we don't really care about Aspen,” she said. “We're more interested in actually doing something with schools. For us, being able to offer this to people is really big.”
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering New York City public schools. To contact Michael, melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.
