“I feel like I found a purpose for all of my struggle and everything and that’s to hopefully help people and make some change,” MacKenzie Wood said.
Wood is one of ten young adults part of the National Alliance on Mental Illness’s Next Gen Youth Advisory Group. Those ten individuals were selected to serve a one year term and create a podcast on various mental health topics.
“I started volunteering at a peer-to-peer crisis hotline when I was 15 so I was taking suicide calls at 15 years old from kids around the nation,” Daniella Ivanir said.
Daniella, MacKenzie, Alyssa and Shannon, four of those members, have all experienced their own mental health struggles. Their diagnoses ranging from OCD to anxiety, to anorexia nervosa and borderline personality disorder.
“When I was struggling when I was young I wish there was someone out there who was maybe not an old person telling me there’s hope,” Shannon Goria said.
They all agree peer support is the game changer needed to help our youth.
“I saw other people who were recovery-oriented and were struggling with similar experiences and with them showing me, ‘Yeah, you can do it,'” Goria added.
This group of young women grew up online, social media having a big influence on their mental health.
“We were launched into it without any sort of guidebook or regulation,” Ivanir said.
Alyssa Sawicki added, “I really don’t like the rhetoric, ‘Oh these kids are spending too much time,’ putting the blame on children when all your friends have it. Everyone you know has it.”
With social media Wood suggests, “Setting your own boundaries and paying attention to your feed and the feelings you get from certain posts.”
Digital health, they say, is part of your overall health. They want to normalize conversations about any struggles at an early age and they’d like support in many environments.
“When you’re in the doctor’s office or when you’re at elementary school, middle school, high school, college, sport team,” Goria said.
They want parents to stop blaming themselves when their child suffers from a mental illness.
“Make sure that you’re creating a space where they feel they won’t be judged and that they’re not going to be belittled or dismissed,” Sawicki said.
Wood added, “Acknowledging how real it is for them, regardless of how you feel about it,”
Ivanir said, “Relating to me. ‘I know what you’re talking about’ or ‘I felt that way when I was a teenager.'”
Senator Samra Brouk chairs the Committee on Mental Health for New York State.
“I think first and foremost we need to listen to young people,” Brouk said. “They like peer-to-peer support. They want cultural competence in the providers that are giving them services and they also want multiple channels to get that help.”
The senator is working to pass a bill that would give all school-aged kids five free telehealth appointments. She says it would be a starting point to get a child on the right track in finding a provider, especially if they find themselves on a waiting list.
“We also need a place where a family feels safe to bring their child when they do need that help,” Brouk added.
The senator says if the state is serious about mental health it needs to look at what can be built specifically for young people so families are more inclined to get help for their child.
The Committee on Mental Health is also trying to pass the Student Lifeline Act which would put 988, the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, and also the National Crisis Text Line on every college ID.