- Did you know, in 2021, 40% of high school students were feeling so sad or helpless, to the point where they couldn't engage in everyday activities?

Compare that to the 28% of high school students that were feeling that way in 2011.

Suicide attempts have gone up 2%, but from 2011 to 2021, almost 60% of female students were feeling sad and helpless and nearly 25% made a suicide plan.

Today, we will barely scratch the surface on some of these topics.

Welcome to "Heart of the Issue."

(upbeat music) - Kiaya Morgan, that's me.

- [Interviewer] What kind of art do you do?

I do a lot of stuff.

I do, like, visual art, I sing and dance and act.

- [Interviewer] So what artists, like, from like any of your fields inspire you?

- Well, when it comes to drawing or painting or anything like that, yeah, Leonardo da Vinci and Van Gogh and Picasso and all, like, the classic art people, like classic artists.

And then for like, for acting and like singing, Donald Glover is a huge inspiration to me.

Like, I love that guy.

- [Interviewer] What sort of mental health issues did you notice in yourself?

- After like my parents divorced, I don't ever remember myself feeling like heavy emotions from it.

Until like at least like a year after they divorced.

And then I was like, man this kind of makes me realize that like I'll never really have like two parents together and that's like what I see on TV that's what I see everywhere.

And so that kind of affected me as a kid.

And so I feel like that kind of like I wouldn't say like caused depression, but it definitely like was hard.

As I got older, because my dad found like a new religion or whatever and started pressing that onto us, my anxiety got worse.

That's when like anxiety started really developing.

And I'd say like it got the worst ever, in like third grade, when I watched a movie that I shouldn't have watched and it made my anxiety like skyrocket.

- [Interviewer] How do you think it affects your life?

Like would you say it has like a really big effect?

- My mental health?

- Yeah.

- Oh man, I mean I'd say it has a really big effect.

Things get better at your own pace, and sometimes things won't get better by themselves, you'll have to make them get better.

(upbeat music) - Vaughn Foster.

- [Interviewer] How long have you been a therapist?

- Let's see, I've been working in mental health since 2019 and started working at an outpatient doing in office, in home and telehealth.

And I transitioned over to community college and now for the main therapy work, I'm working at a college students over at University of Minnesota.

- [Interviewer] What age group do you typically work with there?

- Typically I find the 18 through early 30s to be the biggest population that tends to come in.

- [Interviewer] What mental health issues do you see like most commonly in young people?

- Yeah, so I think on a surface level there's a lot of cases of depression and anxiety.

- [Interviewer] Tell us about your organization again.

- Yeah, so with Polyrhythmic Arts, we are kind of as far as what we're doing is kind of divided into three different areas.

So we do groups and workshops, we host concerts and events and then we also do some digital media.

- [Interviewer] What mental health benefits do you see like in art?

- Yeah, so I see it provides a different medium for people to be able to process feelings.

And sometimes when we're dealing with an issue whether we feel depressed or we feel anxious or we're feeling nervous, there's a lot of times we can almost internalize it but they, oh, I am depressed, I have this issue, I am not motivated.

And being able to think, okay, well who are you in the character of your life?

Whose motivation or the lack of motivation in your life?

How can we separate these two?

- My name is Yamile Ambriz and I'm 16 years old.

- So what's your art form?

- I'd say my art form is visual art, I do ceramics.

- Oh, that's really cool.

How long have you been doing ceramics?

- I've been doing ceramics for about two years now.

- And what's your favorite thing that you've made in the past two years?

- I'd definitely say a carved face.

I feel like I've worked on it for a pretty long time.

- When did you start to notice that you may have been struggling mentally?

- I'd say seventh grade.

- Seventh grade.

And what did that look like for you?

- I felt like it affected my relationships with my family members, my friends, and you know just my grades in general.

- Do you think your mental health has started to improve since then?

- Yes.

- And what does that look like for you?

Like what has helped you improve?

- What's helped me improve?

I feel like definitely, you know encouraging myself, pushing myself, you know to just step out of my comfort zone and try new things that I've never tried before.

- Who do you think was there for you the most when you were not feeling your best?

- My mother, I feel like my mother, you know, really comforted me.

She was there for me, you know, encouraged me to just like do.

- Okay.

Thank you so much for coming in.

I hope you nice rest of your day.

(upbeat music)