(film reel clattering) - Welcome to Ethnic Media Services' weekly national news briefing, which today is co-hosted by the Miami-Dade chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, otherwise known as NAMI.

Thank you for joining us.

I'm Sandy Close, EMS director and today's moderator.

We're focusing this conference on the mental health challenges facing children and youth which have accelerated during the pandemic.

Last October, the American Academy of Pediatrics declared mental illness among children and youth to be a national emergency.

If you are like me, you may have no idea what to do when you realize a young person, even your own child, a friend, or someone you work with, is confronting a mental health crisis.

The healthcare system may be inaccessible, inadequate, unreliable.

Who do you call?

What do you say?

What if you do or say the wrong thing?

Today, we will hear from a national data expert about the broader trends in this field.

And then, we will zoom in on Miami-Dade County, an alliance, a network of people who all share lived experience with mental illness.

To begin our briefing, we present Susan Racher, board president of NAMI Miami-Dade.

Miss Racher, you are giving us our formal welcome.

Thank you so much for co-hosting today's briefing.

- Thank you, Sandy.

And, welcome to our colleagues, our reporters.

This is a very important opportunity to lift up significant messaging.

NAMI Miami is the Miami-Dade and Florida Keys affiliate of the largest mental health organization in the country.

We are a peer-based organization, which means that our programs, our education, our outreach, even our staff in the office, are facilitated by people who are especially trained according to national models.

Most of which are evidence-informed or evidence-based with lived experience with mental health conditions.

NAMI Miami's programs are free to the community.

And, we offer education classes for family members with loved ones with mental health conditions.

We offer support groups for individuals with mental health conditions and support groups for their family members.

We offer education classes for individuals with mental health challenges and we have a warmline that will connect people in the community with our resources and with our programs.

We also have robust prevention programs, one of which you will hear today by my wonderful colleague, Phani Plascencia, that reaches youth and their families with education and awareness.

And, we have a very robust suicide prevention program that educates about warning signs, how to talk to a loved one about self-harm and suicide, how to help a friend, and when, where, and how to access resources.

You'll hear today about the escalation in youth suicide ideation and mental unwellness and self-harm.

And, our programs are directed to help these young people and their families navigate mental health issues and conditions to achieve mental wellness.

I'll just close by saying that NAMI is my volunteer passion!

My day job is with the Wallace Coulter Foundation.

Many of you may know of us.

We're the largest funder of the Asian American Pacific Islander and American Indian and Native Alaskan civic engagement in the U.S. We were driven to this work with the belief that these vital communities deserved an opportunity to realize the American dream.

And, to do that, their voices needed to be heard and they weren't being heard.

And so, we educated those communities about census, about voter registration, about getting out the vote, and about developing leaders that would run for office.

Representation and civic engagement of civil rights.

And, I have to tell you, I also very strongly believe that access to mental healthcare and support and understanding is a civil right, just like voting, just like being counted in the census.

And, unfortunately, care and mental health literacy are elusive to many communities.

That's why these two missions seem to, you know, coalesce in a way that I couldn't have known.

And, just like Coulter does with civic engagement, NAMI does with mental health.

We have to start with education, knowing what you need to know, knowing that you have a right to get help, and knowing where to find help.

Many of the community organizing skills that I learned working with Coulter were applying to the mental health community and to mental health literacy and care.

And, I'm grateful to Sandy!

We worked so effectively on the census, and we took that relationship into the mental health realm.

And, to Ethnic Media and to our panelists for bringing this important information to you.

And, for the reporters for bringing this information to the communities.

And, I also wanna thank the Florida Department of Children and Families, and Thriving Mind South Florida, a managing entity, which is our safety net mental health system of care for supporting NAMI's work and supporting this initiative.

And, with that, I'll turn it back to Sandy.

And, just know that you could go to NAMImiami.org and get information about mental health conditions, about our programs, and access to community resources.

- Thank you, Susan.

Our next speaker is Estephania Plascencia, a youth program coordinator with NAMI Miami-Dade, who will share her personal experience.

Estephania, welcome.

- Hi.

Thank you, Sandy Close.

And, good afternoon and good morning, everyone.

Like Sandy said, my name is Estephania and I'm the youth program coordinator here with NAMI Miami-Dade.

I would like to start by sharing a little bit of my experience living with mental health condition.

I was diagnosed with chronic depression and anxiety approximately six years ago, but I always, or I started showing signs of a mental health conditions ever since I was in elementary school.

I was a very apprehensive kid.

I felt that everything that I did needed to be perfect.

Otherwise, I would get really bad anxiety attacks that manifested in palpitations, sweating, stomach aches, nausea.

Oh!

And, even really bad meltdowns.

So at the same time, I had issues concentrating.

So, I became to struggle academically.

I was always struggling with my schoolwork.

And so, at one point, I felt that I was not as capable as the rest of my peers.

And, of course, that really affected my self-esteem.

So, I grew up; I entered middle school, high school, and the symptoms were still there.

They were expressing themselves in a little different ways, but they were still there.

It was until I graduated from college that these symptoms cost my life completely.

They got in the way of my daily activities.

So, it was practically impossible to get out of bed.

I would experience anxiety attacks, but more frequently.

I started to isolate to the point that I really did not leave my house for more than six months.

Just the thought of it will make me really nervous and nauseous.

I started to stop texting my friends back.

And, there seemed to be no purpose at that moment in my life.

So, it wasn't until a very close person to me convinced me to seek professional help.

And so, I did.

So at last, after 18 years of struggling with the symptoms, I was on my way to recovery.

And so, I went to a psychiatrist and a therapist.

I was put on medication and I'm still on it; works really good for me.

And, in therapy, I started learning healthy coping strategies that helped me replace the negative ones that I had replaced over the years.

Now, NAMI played a really important, and fundamental part in my recovery.

I mean, first of all, they helped me realize I was not alone.

It became part of my support network/family.

It provided me with very useful information about the resources in the community that I really needed to know.

And so, through their courses and support groups that I attended, I felt that I was offered validation and understanding, and that really allowed me to work with other people who were also in similar situations.

And, they were also in their recovery journeys.

It has also allowed to share my story with middle school students and also high school students.

And, that's one of, really, one of my favorite parts of my job.

And now, that I've had-- I've noticed a difference between pre-pandemic and post-pandemic.

I really see a marked difference when we go and present.

So first of all, we receive a lot more questions.

So, kids are more curious.

And, these questions are frequently about, 'how can I ask for help, especially if my parents won't believe me?'

Questions about depression, anxiety; questions about how to help a friend, and what to do if this friend does not wanna get help.

So like that, we just get a lot of questions.

And, I just wanna say that, observing it myself, I do know that our youth definitely needs help.

Thank you.

- Absolutely right.

Thank you.

Question.

What could your parents- and this is not to be critical of your parents but really to tell us parents- what might parents have done differently that would've helped you at a younger age?

- Yes.

Educate.

Education.

Really, they really didn't know anything about mental health.

For them, it was this kid that wanted to get always good grades and he was perfectionist, and he was just anxious.

I would even sometimes get scolded, "Stop being so anxious!

Stop.

You're gonna get sick."

And, really...education.

That would have made a huge difference.

- How did they respond?

And, this is coming also from a number of questions in the chat.

How did they respond as your struggles got deeper, as you were in college, as you became a young adult?

- Yeah.

So in different ways.

By my parents, by my father, I was judged.

Like, "why don't you wanna go out?

You're being lazy."

"What are you gonna do?

Are you gonna get a job?"

Right?

And, my mom started to get worried, of course.

And, she's the one who started to do more research into this.

And, once I was diagnosed, my mom has always been so supportive.

And, my dad still struggles a little bit with the idea that I need medication.

However, I mean, after five years of being with NAMI and talking about it and bringing awareness, he is understanding better and accepting better the idea of her daughter having a mental health condition.

- So, what do you think is the most effective way of addressing the stigma, the negative stigma?

You talk about education, but practically speaking, when you talk with the students, for example, you must find people are, or do you find that people are embarrassed at first?

But, you're suggesting they're a little more forthcoming, more curious.

How do you tell them when parents don't believe them?

What's your advice?

- Yeah.

Well?

First of all, with the stigma, sharing my story.

I think that has been the strongest tool to fight against the stigma.

Talk about it and share my story.

Of course, I was nervous at the beginning.

It took a while for me to get comfortable and saying it to other people.

And, that really is what inspired young people to stand up and share their story.

That's exactly-- because they look at us and they're like, "oh, she looks just like me.

"Like you."

Right?

So, that this must be normal.

And, we've had students who stand up and share their stories in auditorium with 200 people.

So, definitely sharing our story is very powerful.

- Thank you very much.

I think you'll see more questions and a real appreciation for sharing the story.

Is it your sense, Estephania, that there are more people willing to acknowledge that they are having difficulties or that the times we're living in, the environment, a lot of young people are dealing with is causing an increase in the kind of anxiety you experienced as a child?

- I think there's definitely been an increase.

However, there's more information after the pandemic.

People have talked about that.

So they're getting help, yes.

And, they've been acknowledging that a lot more.

However, I'm always with NAMI.

Right?

And, I always go and talk about mental health with kids.

Sometimes, I forget that outside this world, there's a lot of work to be done.

Still, a lot of people won't really...

I mean, when I mention, "oh, I have to take my medication"- wow- they get, like, quiet.

Like, 'oh my God.

let's not say anything about that.'

Right?

So yes, a lot of people are asking for help, but at the same time, there's still a lot of people that we still need to reach.

But, things are getting better.

I think so!

- Oh, that's a wonderful spirit of optimism.

We'll now go to our last speaker, Beth Jarosz, program director in U.S. programs and acting director for KidsData, the population reference bureau.

Ms. Jarosz, please go ahead.

- Hello, all!

I wanna thank you for inviting me today to talk about trends in teen mental health.

I'm Beth Jarosz, program director at PRB, where I work on issues of population, health and well-being.

And, you can find me on Twitter, @datageekb.

Before I start, I wanna tell you a bit about the information I'll be sharing.

I'm a numbers person.

So unlike today's other panelists, I'm going to be sharing data on suicide rates, hospitalizations, and overdoses, but each one of those numbers represents a person.

I talk about numbers because we need to understand the trends in order to change trends and save lives.

As you can see on the screen here, youth ages 15 to 19 are shown in light blue and ages 10 to 14 are in dark blue.

And, I will keep those colors consistent throughout.

I'll share U.S. trends and will add Florida and Miami data, where possible.

If we look at the U.S. suicide rate on this chart, we can see that the suicide rate for 15 to 19 year olds is nearly 60% higher in 2020 than it was in 2007.

Perhaps even more troubling, we can see that the suicide rate for 10 to 14 year olds in 2020 is more than triple the rate in 2007.

In Florida, for 10 to 14 year olds, you can see a lot of gaps in the data.

That means data were suppressed by CDC for confidentiality.

That usually happens when there are fewer than 20 cases.

But even with those gaps, we can still see a rapid rise from 2018 to 2020.

The suicide rate for 15 to 19 year olds more than doubled from 2010 to 2020.

To put Florida's rise into context, I compared it with the three other largest states in the U.S. From 2010 to 2020, rates in California rose by about 33%.

Rates in New York barely changed.

Rates in Texas rose by almost 80% and rates in Florida rose by more than 100%.

In Florida, youth suicide rates are highest for white and for Asian and Pacific Islander youth.

Rates for Black and Hispanic or Latino youth are similar.

But, I wanna point out that rates for Black youth are rising fast.

They have more than, or they have doubled in the past two decades and most of that increase was just in the past 10 years.

You may have noticed that the data for Indigenous populations is suppressed in Florida, but I don't want to ignore those youth.

Nationwide, we know that they face suicide rates many times higher than for other groups.

Within the state, Miami is doing better than average.

Youth suicide rates are lower than the state average and lower than the Tampa and Orlando areas.

However, they have risen by nearly 60% in the past 10 years.

And, of course, the suicide rate is just one indicator of the youth mental health crisis.

Self-inflicted injury hospitalizations have been rising nationwide.

They more than doubled between 2009 and 2020.

Unintentional poisoning deaths, most of which are drug overdoses had been fairly stable, but they rose sharply during the pandemic.

So, who is at high risk?

From the data, we know that Indigenous youth; youth who experienced childhood adversity, like, of suicide in the family or abuse, or living with someone with substance abuse problems are at risk; LGBTQ youth; youth who experience homelessness or who are in out-of-home settings like foster care, are at an increased risk, as are youth who experience bullying.

We also know that there is incredible unmet need for mental health services.

One-in-six youth have current diagnoses of ADD, ADHD, anxiety, behavior or conduct problems or depression, but only half received mental health treatment for those problems in the prior year.

Later on in the panel, you'll be hearing specific actions that people can take to help address this crisis.

In my slide deck, which will be made available, there are some specific policy recommendations.

So, what can we do to address teen mental health?

We can destigmatize and expand access to mental healthcare.

We can replicate what works.

Look at states like New York, where there hasn't been an increase and figure out what those states are doing, what policies do they have, and replicate those in places where rates are rising faster.

Reduce childhood adversity.

We know that discrimination and difficult life circumstances increase the risk of mental health challenges later in life, and we can make those changes and break the intergenerational cycle of violence.

And, center the needs of youth who are at risk.

For more information, you can visit kidsdata.org Thank you.

- Thank you very much.

I was so-- Honestly, that was a terrific overview.

Really appreciate it.

When you talk, Beth, about the national trends and then you look at states like Florida with its very rapid rise, as somebody who's worked in youth health, do you have any sense of why some states stand out like Florida?

- I think that's a really good question.

And, there is no one answer.

I think that there are some things like social media that we know are associated with poor youth mental health outcomes nationwide, worldwide.

There are also-- I mentioned, there are certain groups that are at risk, like LGBTQ youth, and states that have pro-LGBTQ youth that have supportive policies have not seen rates rise as fast.

States that have policies that are anti-trans or that are seen as more hostile toward sexual and gender minorities, those are the states that rates have been rising faster.

Is that completely correlated?

There is some research to suggest that those are linked; that states that have supportive policies have better youth mental health outcomes.

So, that may be one of the explanations.

- Sunita, do you wanna ask your question?

- Uh, yes!

So-?

(laughs) Sorry, I was unable to unmute!

But Beth I wanted to ask you, with the rise of social media, is there a correlation indicating- and the data seem to suggest that there is a correlation- between the rise of social media and things like TikTok, et cetera, which promote a certain lifestyle or certain look, et cetera, and suicide rates?

Would you suggest that there is such a correlation?

- I don't know if I could say that there's a direct causality between social media and suicide rates, but what we are seeing in research coming out is that social media and particularly for some groups is leading to poor mental health, and suicide can be one outcome.

If mental health-- if rates of depression are rising, if rates of anxiety are rising, that can lead to suicide in some cases.

There are things that you-- there are interventions.

If someone is experiencing depression, there are interventions that can keep that from progressing to suicide, even if the depression is present.

So- - Thank you, everybody, and sending our best wishes to all.

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