- [Announcer] Watching "Teens in Crisis," a Basin PBS live town hall, underwritten by the Springboard Center.

(soft gentle music) - Good evening.

I'm Becky Ferguson, coming to you live from the Basin PBS Anwar Family Studio.

Thank you for joining us tonight for a look at teens in crisis.

The nation's leading experts in pediatric health recently declared a national state of emergency in adolescent mental health.

Teen years have always been fraught but now more than ever.

What's happening with West Texas teens, and what can we do to help?

During the next hour, with the help of a panel of experts, we will explore the challenges facing local teens, topics including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, sex trafficking, bullying, and social media use, abuse, and addiction.

Let's get started by introducing our panel: Dr. Mark Alexander, executive director of Springboard Center, a Midland substance abuse treatment facility; Dr. Muhammad Saad, a fellow with Texas Tech Physician's Child and Adolescent Psychiatry of the Permian Basin; Lisa Bownds, founder and CEO of Reflections Ministry, an organization which rescues victims of sex trafficking; Kristi Edwards, executive director of Centers for Families and Children of Midland and Odessa; Joelle Bracken, counselor at Goddard Junior High School in Midland; Maggie Navarette, counselor at Odessa High School; Mike Gerke, Odessa police chief; and Seth Herman Midland police chief.

Our program tonight is underwritten by Springboard Center.

If you have questions during tonight's broadcast, please visit our Facebook page, and we will do everything we can to get them answered for you.

The pandemic intensified mental health struggles that were already widespread among American teens.

US surgeon general Vivek Murthy warned in December worldwide symptoms of anxiety and depression doubled during the pandemic.

But mental health issues were already increasing in the US before COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

For example, emergency room visits due to depression, anxiety, and similar conditions rose 28% between 2011 and 2015.

We're gonna begin tonight's discussion with observations from each of our panelists.

We'll discuss possible causes for the rise in mental health problems among teens.

Then we'll conclude with advice from our experts on how to help address and possibly prevent the growing incidence of teen depression and anxiety.

We're gonna start with observations, and I'm gonna start with our counselors.

So Joelle, will you begin and tell us what you're observing from the students that you see?

- Well, I'd like to start by saying this is not all kids, but some kids that I see and some in large numbers are stressed, are tired.

To be honest, some are breaking down and not handling what's coming at them well.

- Maggie, will you tag onto that?

- Yeah, I think our community and our nation has been faced with seeing death really close, and even for us as adults, there's people who are trained to face that kind of severe stressful situations, and our children are not.

So our children are hearing one with the pandemic, with the shooting that happened in our small community, they were being faced with realizing, "I'm living my life as a teen.

I really thinking about it, thinking that I'm gonna live forever, and then having to face the reality of hearing relatives are being hospitalized."

So I think even for us as adults to have to face that we're mortals, I think for our teens having to think, "How is my life gonna be defined?

What's the legacy that I think?"

I think those are big questions for a lot of our kids that normally they were not having to face, especially not in our community.

We tend to be a community that doesn't face like crime, like Houston, California, big, big states that have a lot of that.

So I think that's been very difficult for the kids that I have seen personally.

- Between 2013 and 2019, depression was common among children and adolescents aged 12 to 17 with a 20.9% reporting major depressive episodes, 36% feeling sad or hopeless, and nearly 20% reporting they have seriously considered suicide.

Muhammad, could you tell us what you're observing with your patients?

And then if you will also talk about the symptoms of depression.

- Sure.

Thank you very much for inviting to this panel.

So for last two decade, so we are seeing a rise in the mental health condition and depression and anxiety being the most common condition seen all over the world and same, transcending the US in our community as well.

Depression is a chemical imbalance in our brain.

It's one of the most common mental condition where it affect how we feel, how we think, and how we handle our daily activities like sleep, appetite, or work.

For children, how to handle the school stress, right?

It has a range of symptoms, which goes from feeling of hopelessness, worthlessness, blaming themself for everything.

In the depressive person mind, they think things negatively more than positively.

For example, "Nothing is gonna go good for me."

Everything is worse in their eyes.

"I'm not good enough.

I'm not capable enough."

If there's a bad interaction with the parents and child, they blame themselves.

"Okay.

I'm not a good children.

I'm not a good child.

I'm not a good student."

So all these feelings goes in the child's brain affect how he handle his daily stress because teenagers, we know, high school stress, bullying, like if they are not interacting with their peers good, right?

If they don't have a good friendship, that's going to affect them.

Coming back to the symptoms again, feeling of worthlessness, hopelessness, guilty, change in the appetite, change in the sleep.

Sometimes they started have bad thoughts of hurting or harming themself, suicidal thoughts, which are alarming symptoms.

And if we see any of those symptoms in our kids, we might need to hospitalize them in some severe conditions.

Yeah.

- An estimated 13.7% of teens have anxiety disorders.

Kristi, what are you you seeing with the teens that you encounter?

- We're seeing about 75% of the teens that have come in over the last year, reporting symptoms of stress and anxiety, and it's something that they've not brought to us before.

They would come in and they would say, "I'm having trouble sleeping."

They really couldn't define it.

We've done a really good job of helping them define what they're dealing with, and once they know and once we know and when parents know, we can attack that problem.

So like he was saying, whenever you have all of those symptoms or a good bit of those symptoms over a certain amount of time, that's when we've gotta step in and help these kids.

- Are the symptoms of anxiety similar to those of depression?

- They can be very much the same.

- Go over them if you will.

- Okay.

So once again, well, there's fear.

They might have fear.

There's trouble sleeping.

There's not wanting to leave the home.

It can affect their appetites.

It can affect their relationships with their peer group, with their family group.

They lose interest in things that they normally did.

They have hard time concentrating, paying attention.

They might have psychosomatic issues such as stomachaches, headaches that will keep them from wanting to go to school or to interact with anyone.

- Chief Gerke, I'm gonna pop over to you.

You've told me that you have observed more violence in teens since the beginning of COVID.

Could you tell us what you've seen in recent years than what you're seeing now?

- Well, I just think you see frustration, and that frustration's taken out towards other teens with violent crime.

Just the other day, Monday, I believe, of this week, we had a shooting in Odessa.

Luckily no one was hit, but it all started because a group of 12 year olds were upset with another group of 12 year olds.

The first group contacts a older cousin who brings a gun, a 22 year old with a gun.

That's how things escalate.

And we think about in our day, in high school, in junior high, when we had issues with our classmates, it didn't escalate to that.

So the question is, why now?

Why do things escalate to that point now?

And you see that type of crime, just senseless crime.

It really has no thought behind it, and that's what you see, I guess, a rise in.

- Well, will you speculate as to why you think that is?

- I'm not trained like - We'll get them to - several members - weigh in as well.

- of the panel.

Yeah, I think schools being closed down, homeschooling, there's just a lack of socialization that occurred.

I think that's a big part of it.

I think social media is a big part of it because (laughs) we have what we call keyboard warriors.

That's what we call 'em at the Odessa Police Department that will get on social media and say things to a person or about a person that they would never say to that person's face, right?

But they'll say it on social media, and it's hurtful things, and it's things that just really can be bothersome, and those things affect children.

- Before we talk about crime in Midland, I wanna come over to you, Kristi.

Do you have some theories as to why things accelerate when they didn't used to?

- I think we're not teaching our kids how to bounce back or how to rebound from disappointment or rejection or embarrassment.

For myself, I know that if I'm terribly disappointed or my feelings are hurt or whatever, I know how many days it takes me to where I'm back to myself.

In that time, I'm probably not gonna make any rash decisions or make any rash actions.

I don't think we help our kids learn and how to bounce back.

We've gotta talk to 'em.

"You will bounce back.

Let's help you figure out how long it takes you, and when you do, you can have that cooling down period, and then you can be more rational in what you might wanna say or do."

- Chief Herman, are you making similar observations in Midland?

- Most definitely.

It's not necessarily an overall increase in crime, but it's the egregiousness of the crimes that we're seeing much more, just like Chief Gerke had already mentioned.

We have a considerable uptick in violent criminal acts being perpetrated by juveniles, everything from drive-by shootings to attempted homicides, which we experienced just last week, as a matter of fact, an attempted homicide by one juvenile against another for nothing more than what we would consider seemingly innocuous misrepresentations, misinformation, misunderstanding, whatever you have.

Nothing that any of us, a rational individual, child or adult, can look at as a valid reason to attempt to take someone's life, but that's what we're seeing.

We're also seeing an increase in juvenile gangs.

I think that a lot of that started during COVID, as the doctor already mentioned and everyone's echoed here already.

These kids have to have that peer-to-peer interaction, that positive peer-to-peer interaction.

Well, if they're not getting it at school because of COVID and they're schooling at home, well, they're gonna seek it from somewhere.

And now you have these gangs that have formed, and that's their interaction.

That's their positive interaction now.

- That's their community.

- Exactly.

That's their community.

That's their family now.

And those are the groups that are going out and committing these vehicle burglaries, and they're targeting specifically guns.

- Yes.

- And these guns are being utilized in, again, drive-by shootings, home invasion robberies against drug dealers and these attempted homicides.

There's a litany of these egregious crimes are being committed by juveniles predominantly.

- You were mentioning gangs, and when we spoke earlier, you said that you felt like social media glamorized the thug and gangster lifestyle.

Can you talk a little bit more about that?

- Most assuredly.

The positives that come with social media are very often countermanded by the negatives, and we're seeing the negatives specifically in our juveniles.

Mike already mentioned the bullying that goes on on online, and for us, for an adult, you can go, "Well, I'm just gonna turn that off and not pay attention," but that's their life.

That's their connection to the outside world and to their friends.

And when they're being bullied online, well, that just exacerbates whatever issues they're dealing with.

Well, the same thing with what we're talking about, the negative influences of this so-called thug lifestyle, the representation of firearms, of money, of dope.

We pull up these social media accounts in our investigations and their they're rife with those photographs of their peers in those situations, and it represents this glamor, this excitement, and again, we go back to the thug life.

It's criminality, and unfortunately, kids aren't capable of looking at the after effects of what they're getting into in the actions.

There's no repercussions until it actually comes to fruition.

- Maggie, you're nodding your head.

- Yeah, I think with mental health and with youth that are involved in gangs, we're talking about a smaller population that, for instance, if they weren't able to attend games, they weren't able to have a mentor, like a coach, they weren't able to attend churches because of COVID, they didn't have that positive social skill that is so needed during junior high and high school years, and yet they come from an impoverished family where the parents still had to go out and work.

So they had no supervision, and they went out and looked who to hang out.

So you still found the streets, even though we closed a lot of things.

We closed the schools.

We closed the sports.

We closed a lot of things that would've been healthy for them.

They still walked around and found somebody in the neighborhood that was probably older, and again, just trying to find that way to recruit that child, and now they got sucked into for two years, a little bit more than two years, with the population that maybe if they would've had that buffer to be in a safer place, they weren't, yeah.

- And the structure.

Mark, you have mentioned that some teens experiencing depression or anxiety try to self medicate with drugs or alcohol.

Can you talk a little bit about issues of addiction in West Texas?

- Yeah, I think to piggyback a little bit on the good counselor's reference, what I called parental interruption seems to be lacking in all of this.

Not only are kids overstressed, the family's overstressed, parents are overstressed, and I think parents spend a lot of time being distracted by even their own social media claims and going into a restaurant and seeing a family having dinner, but they all have their phones out, looking at a screen.

They're not having dinner with each other.

They having dinner with whoever's on social media.

So I think the inability to process, "How long does my anxiety last?

How long does my disappointment last?

How do I deal with unmet expectations in life?"

And inability to process that with a parent, with a significant other leads to the kind of things that the rest of we're all talking about.

The escape from that is often kids looking for a substance that will medicate or mediate how they feel.

Once they experiment and find out it works, if their peer group says it works, they experiment it with, it works, we have an uptick in that kind of use, and substance use disorder is, I think the doctor would echo, is a mental health issue.

It is an outgrowth of a mental health issue, and without a significant other, a parent, working parents, God love 'em, but you gotta be involved with your kids.

You have to help your kids process what is happening in their life and be involved enough to know when they need to process it.

- Muhammad, on the topic of addiction, you have mentioned to me that the brain circuits involved in like addiction to cocaine are the same brain circuits, if I'm saying it right, involved in addiction to social media.

- That's right.

- and that you have also, I believe, told me that the longer the screen time, the more likely there is to be anxiety and depression.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

- Yeah, that's correct.

So a lot of studies are done in this area, and they all are showing with this result that there's a dose response relationship between the screen time and the symptoms of depression, screen time and the feeling of body with the satisfaction, screen time and feeling of worthlessness and hopelessness, and they which are also the symptoms of depression, screen time and less amount of sleep because of the addiction of being using phone constantly, they were poor sleep, right?

Chronic sleep deprivation, new one, which in turn cause anxiety and depressive symptoms.

So yes, social media is a great platform, right?

It allows us to share ideas, connect with more people, interact with the like-minded people, but it comes with this all consequences.

Now what we are seeing is between the age of 13 to 17.

In the US, 86% own smartphones, and 70% are addicted to it in some way, right?

Means like spending more than normal time.

When I was growing up, I did not have the smartphone.

Probably none of us have the smartphone in that age, and nowadays, phone is a smartphone where we browse, where we surf, where we search, where we study, and where we go on the website, like TikTok, Facebook, and the social media platforms.

So yeah, coming back to the topic of addiction pathway.

So like, as doctor mentioned, like when we take cocaine, right?

It can give a feeling of euphoria, feeling good, right?

And that frees a chemical called dopamine in our brain loop, which plays an important role in the rewarding pathway that leads to the addiction.

Seeing click, when I post a picture on a Facebook, right?

Of course, I would like to post a great picture of myself, right?

And I would be waiting for that like.

Someone go and like.

I'll get a notification, right?

Tick.

The notification will want me to, "Okay, let me just check my phone," right?

That will lose the chemical called dopamine, same chemical, which gives me the reward.

Okay, someone like my photo, right?

And that's a loop.

Now I'm sitting there for awhile.

I'm not getting a notification, but I still wanna see my phone, right?

And I think a lot of us do that, okay?

Every constantly.

We know no one's calling me, right?

But still wanna see my phone because the same loop dopamine, because there's a carving, right?

Craving to see your phone again, again.

So that has been seen with the social media, with the telephone, even with the video games, right?

Now we're talking about the teenage population.

I've seen a lot of kids addicted to games, and games are very violent games.

I personally don't play games, but all my kids, when they come to me, I'm like, "What kind of games do you play?"

And they give me different kind of game names.

Most of them are very violent and they wanna play that game.

Even their parents are, "Okay."

If their parents ask them to stop playing game and go and eat food, they don't wanna do that.

They argue with their parents because they're so addicted to playing games or whatever media they got, they don't wanna leave that part.

They would not sleep, they would not eat, but they would just constantly hook themselves in front of the electronic devices.

So this is also playing a bigger role in our mental health rise, yeah.

- Well, I guess it's- - If I can piggyback.

- Yeah, please do, Mark.

- In terms of that dopamine and that reward that he's talking about, we've discovered in research across the last couple of years that there is as much reward in dopamine that happens to someone addicted to a drug in the search and finding of it as there is in the use of it.

So they get a double opportunity to have that dopamine dump.

The other thing I wanna say about social media is I've always believed that comparison kills love, and if I'm on social media comparing my life to someone else's, I'm gonna kill the love I have for my myself, and that's a depressive episode for a young person who's trying to figure out what life is all about, what I'm supposed to do with my life, and how life really works.

So I think that comparative aspect of that social media, "Oh, I can't be Will Smith and get rid of someone with a slap on the face.

I have to be this person that I am.

I can't make the straight As or be the honor student.

so I have to be the person that I am," and it becomes a very depressive reality.

I think anger turned inward is depression, and it becomes a depressive reality, and kids wanna escape from it.

- Well, speaking of depression, Lisa, I wonder if anxiety and depression make people more vulnerable to sexual mistreatment or even to sexual trafficking.

- Absolutely, and we know that 94% of trafficking victims have already been sexually or physically abused before they even get to be on the street and are trafficked.

And all of the things that the panelists have said tonight are evident in every resident, every survivor that we see, knowing that they are looking for a fulfillment, how to escape, how to move through the violence that has been placed upon them.

And so depression is absolutely anxiety and substance and everything else is.

And social media of course drives our field as well.

- And is social media a tool for sex trafficking?

- Absolutely.

We don't have trafficking unless we have a demand, but we are easily bought and sold through social media.

You can have a person delivered to your door within 15 minutes, and you can purchase them on any device.

We have about 11 to 1,200 ads a day just in the Permian Basin of how you can buy a person and pick the make, model, and size.

And just like Chief Herman was talking about, the family and stepping into a role, there will be someone that will fulfill that need of family and love and support, whether they find it in their gang family or just in through social media and connection.

- Chief Herman, you're nodding your head.

Did you have something you wanted to add there?

- Well, Lisa has already touched upon all of it well.

The investigations that we're conducting, my agency as well as I'm sure Mike's, they're social media driven now.

It's now your, like you said, ordering people online, and we're setting up on these events and hopefully targeting the seller, not necessarily the victim of the trafficking.

So social media is huge in that area.

And something else to touch upon that everybody's already talked about a little bit is the drug use.

The teens we're seeing that are involved in this gang activity, I have yet to meet one that is not in some form of fashion using drugs.

We're seeing a lot of prescription medication abuse, Xanax predominantly.

Marijuana is just rampant, and what people don't understand is marijuana is a hallucinogen, and when kids are under the influence of these drugs, what happens?

Their inhibitions lower, and they do things that normally they would not do or wouldn't think of doing.

And so that spurs that violent behavior that we're dealing with quite predominantly now on the street.

- Can I piggy piggyback?

- Absolutely.

- Just on the drug use - Please do.

- for just a second.

And I think when we talk about the particularly prescription drug use, it's very dangerous.

A lot of people look at that and say, "Okay, it's a hydrocodone, it's a Xanax.

It's a whatever."

But now, and I think you're seeing this, too, fentanyl has made its way here, right?

And fentanyl is so very dangerous because just a very small minute portion can poison someone.

And these kids are buying pills from dealers that they've bought pills from before, and they were okay, and now they buy a pill, and it's not okay and they're overdosing, and that's a very dangerous situation.

I think all of your officers, I know all of my officers carry Narcan.

I believe over the last few months, we've used that a countless number of times to bring kids back.

- And I'll give you a specific example, not to cut you off.

- No, you're fine.

- We had our first 15 year old overdose on fentanyl just last week, the end of last week, who happened to be a gang member as well.

A search warrant was subsequently run on the dwelling.

We recovered stolen guns and identified that obviously, this kid is using drugs that he perceived to be another prescription medication that are being marketed as such by dealers, and that's the result is an overdose.

- If I may.

- You know what, Mark?

Hold onto that.

We're gonna take a quick break and we're going to- - My memory's very short.

- Very short, very short.

No, but we'll talk about it in just a second.

We're gonna take a quick break, and we're gonna hear from some local teens.

Stay with us.

(soft uplifting music) - That's a harder topic to say.

- Just like what goes through people's heads when they wanna do that?

- Yes, I do.

- In a way, yes.

- It's like you're not showing anybody who cares because why would you go mess with someone else's stuff?

And not if it's your stuff, then it's fine, but I don't think that should influence anyone.

- 'Cause how do I explain this?

(laughs) - I believe that there is a emotional crisis going on amongst the teens.

I feel like teenagers are misunderstood.

- I guess it just feels like the world is falling apart, (laughs) especially to me right now 'cause I'm a teenager and I'm getting closer and closer to becoming an adult, and it's terrifying, especially when it feels like the world is just teetering on the edge of every bad thing that could happen and your anxiety rises.

And it's like, "How am I gonna handle this?

Is the world just about to?"

And sometimes I'm panicking, and other times I'm like, "This is it, I'm ready.

I'm accepting the end."

But I guess I could say I do feel, yeah, that it's a little bit of crisis, but other times I also like to try, "Okay, well, if we're in a crisis, I'm going at least try to be positive about what I can like now, like my friends, my family, (laughs) where I am right now, what I'm doing, being able to just enjoy what I can."

- Supportive people that understand what they're doing can really help out and as well as a community who tries to understand.

- [Announcer] Basin PBS is closing down Main Street May 12th for our third annual Main Street Live.

This year, we'll open with Texas icon Jody Nix and feature Texas Hall of Fame inductee Gary P. Nunn.

Tickets on sale now and are available online by phone or stop by Basin PBS, located at 203 North Main Street in Midland.

Join us and celebrate what you like about Texas, sponsored by S. Javaid Anwar and Midland Energy.

Underwriting support provided by these partners.

- "May you live in interesting times" is said to be a Chinese curse masquerading as a blessing, and we do live in interesting times, times of danger and uncertainty.

But we have traveled difficult roads before and come out whole at the other end.

How do we grab onto hope, not fear, in these interesting times?

Historian John Meacham charts a path.

I'm Becky Ferguson.

Join me Thursday, April 7th at 7:00 PM for a "One Question" special program.

- Hi.

I'm Emily, you're Basin PBS membership director.

You might recognize my name from some of the letters you receive from Basin PBS, or if you've called the station, you've probably talked to me.

Sure, you watch our programs and come to our events, but what actually happens if you don't support Basin PBS?

What's the worst that could happen?

Sure, things might change a little.

There might be some cuts here and there.

We'd probably have to get rid of some of the kids' programming and dramas, some of the news programs and live events and probably a lot of the arts and culture programming you can't see anywhere else.

But what does it really matter if you don't support Basin PBS?

You'll hardly know the difference.

(light clicks off) (light clicks off) (bright upbeat music) (gentle pleasant guitar music) - More, no less violence.

- Don't get too hung up on needing to be what everyone else wants or putting expectations on yourself 'cause it drowns you.

- Never give up.

Don't ever give up on yourself ever.

- A lot less violence towards Americans, like between Americans.

There's a lot more violence, more people killing at each other, more people getting assaulted and other stuff.

- Be kind.

Be kind to those people around you.

Be caring and try to understand the people that surround you and your community.

- Try to also take time to wonder, are you happy?

Take time for yourself to feel, "Am I happy with this?

Do I feel comfortable with this?"

- It may seem hard, it may seem impossible, but it's not.

I was in your shoes.

Just don't give up and try to go to that finish line.

- And you can still make people proud by being happy.

- And it's like, why can't everyone just be friends and not have so much conflict and be bad people?

- 'Cause at the end of the day, you can make everyone else happy and still feel miserable.

So (laughs) especially at our age, you want to do this.

You wanna be cool to your friends or you wanna be top student or you want to do this for your family so they could be proud of you.

Do what makes you happy, what makes you feel fulfilled.

- And I believe that some way and somehow, you can do something to better yourself emotionally.

- I like that.

Do something to better yourself emotionally.

That's a nice note in which we'll return to our panel.

And Mark, as we went into the break, we had just been talking about fentanyl overdoses, and you had something that you wanted to add.

- Yeah, just to caution really, for anyone out there that's using substance.

We noticed last fall at our facility through tox screens, 25% uptick in fentanyl coming through those tox screens.

Nearly to a person who came through, they didn't know they were using fentanyl.

It was a total surprise to them, and they argued about at the tox screen.

What is happening with dealers now, they're not just buying the pills that model the prescription drug.

They're taking it and crumbling and sprinkling it like salt on everything that they sell.

Whether it's cocaine or marijuana or anything else, they sprinkle it like salt, so everyone gets a little bit of fentanyl 'cause it's so addictive, and it is a little bit more of a bump, and it becomes the thing that they're after.

And that has continued to be part of our reality at Springboard because that's what's happening.

It's sprinkled like salt over everything that's being used now.

- Becky can I add something?

- Yeah, please do.

- The teenagers that had overdoses after they had consequences and everything and they ended up in my office, one of the things that we're finding is they have trauma that has never been addressed.

And so with trauma, then they wanna numb that pain, and again, most of them, they really didn't say, "This morning, I'm gonna take this, and I'm gonna kill myself."

It was more they were already vulnerable in a lot of areas.

They had been survivors of sexual abuse.

Some of them with some pockets, again, family incarcerated, children of immigrants, families who have had severe trauma and it has never been addressed because either they don't have the resources or they don't have access to medical help, and that's what I've seen.

Trauma has been the underlying theme of the overdoses that I have seen.

- Lisa, do you wanna tag onto that about trauma and drug abuse?

- Absolutely.

I think for trafficking victims, they usually get a label saying that it's just one of those things.

They want it, they're addicted to something, and we know that 92% of trafficking victims are not addicted to anything, but it is forced on them as a way of keeping them compliant, keeping them with the ability to go all night, and it turns into something that is a self medicating because, on average, trafficking victims are usually raped about 6,000 times before someone really sees that they might be a victim or they're able to have real resources.

That does a lot to you psychologically to even cope and to be able to manage.

I met with a young man today and he said bullying is not as it used to be in schools, the way it was with us, somebody picking on you in the hallway during class, but it's all online.

And I think so much of that and feeling good about yourself comes out in how do we medicate just to make it through a day?

I spoke with a young man that said, "Weed is just like an afterthought.

It's just something kids do."

I don't know about y'all, but like weed for me growing up was the thing to stay away from.

I'm dating myself, I think, to say how old I am because that was the drug to stay away from, and now it's just like it's no big deal.

It's just a bystander of all the other things that you talk about that really can devastate their lives.

- It's really common.

- Just to add onto it, if you allow it.

- Yeah, please.

Yeah.

- So the three most common substances in the US are alcohol, marijuana, and then there comes some other kind of Xanax or the tablets, right?

But what I've seen this community so far, and I see childrens mostly, always marijuana.

Now I seen a kid saying that he used marijuana daily, but when I ask him, "Do you feel you are addicted to it?"

He's like, "No," but he use it daily.

I'm like, "What does weed do for you?

"Is it just for recreation purpose?"

"No, it helps me calm down.

It helps me sleep."

I'm like, "Can I offer you something alternatively?

Because in your age group, and drugs have its own side effects.

Do you might if I offer another medication, therapy?"

"No, I think I'm okay with using marijuana."

So they don't agree that they're addicted to it, and then also, they want to use it.

So that's what we are seeing.

And there are studies showing that marijuana use in the younger population, teenage population affect the brain of wiring, and even they stop it, sometimes, they start experiencing symptoms two or three years after stopping their drug.

And they feel like, "Oh, I have no side effect with marijuana.

It just not do anything for me."

No, it's doing thing for you.

It's affecting your brain, which can manifest as depression, anxiety, maybe hallucination because psychosis also develop in people who used marijuana in the past, and some people who develop psychosis and those things, then they just continue to use alternative drugs, as we were mentioning self medicating themself with their drug before they come and see any professional help.

- Kristi, why do you think teen mental health is more fragile now than it was 10, 15, 20 years ago?

- Well, I think they're exposed to more than we, and Lisa and I had this conversation yesterday is the things that we had to deal with whenever we were teens, we led a more sheltered life, a less busy life.

There were fewer expectations.

I'm not saying that we weren't expected to do well, but there's heavy expectations on these teens now.

You've gotta start passing all the tests that are in the school.

You've gotta start planning for college early.

You've gotta start doing all of these things.

You're not just allowed to develop and find your interest and enjoy those interests and have a broad base of support.

If you're play sports, if you're in Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, if you're in your church youth group, sometimes we're pigeonholing kids and making them choose something to where if they fail in one thing, they don't have anything else to fall back on.

For us, I felt like we did a lot more.

We had that broader base.

So if a friend got mad at us at something, we had another friend to go to.

- But we also had family.

We also had people in our lives, and I think we have crisis for teens, and we had crisis long before the pandemic.

We had more accountability.

They were in school.

There were people watching.

Our educators are on the front lines every single day, doing what they do well, and we have tied their hands in so many areas because we don't allow them to teach, and we want everyone to be normal, and we want everyone to be in the same class, and then we forget that we have to change a culture, but look at where the majority of our students are coming from that are in the gangs.

They're just mimicking what they've already seen in their lives, and we're not talking about just for a couple of years.

We're talking about for a lifetime.

When we talk about trafficking victims, that 31% of pictures on pornography sites are of kids under the age of five, well, who do you think is putting those out there?

Who do you think's touching them and doing things to them?

When you have 46% of trafficking victims that are sold by their family, we're already setting them up to be addicted to things, to self medicate.

I would self-medicate, too, if I thought my dad was crawling into bed with me every night or selling me to my uncle, selling me to his friends during football games.

All those things happen, and we have got to figure out, are we going to change and do something different in a culture and start to hold people accountable and start to check in instead of just going, passing it by because we say we don't have enough people, we don't have enough resources.

We have got to be the people that say we are going to change because it starts at home, and it starts for us holding accountable the parents that are teaching these kids and not showing them, how do we move to the next level with them?

- Did you wanna say something, chief?

You were nodding your head.

- Not a lot, but.

(women laugh) Lisa just hit it on the head.

We have parents who are not parenting.

They're sending their kids to school to be raised by teachers, and then they're calling the police to discipline them, but they're not involved in their kids' lives, and they're taking a backseat under the auspice of, "Well, I don't want to stifle them.

I don't want appear as though I'm being too controlling."

Well, that's your job.

Your sole job as a parent is to raise a good person safely and bring them up to be productive members of society.

That's for the whole of the community.

Well, when we take a step back and go, "You know what?

I'm gonna let 'em do what they wanna do and give 'em their freedom," what do we think is gonna happen?

It's inevitable.

- Maggie, you and I talked a little bit about the destigmatization of mental health, and you see that as a positive.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

- Well, I think to put our money and make our money be worth it, I think we have to do prevention.

And I worked for a program that was called Weed and Seed.

The cops were the weed.

They removed the weed out of the neighborhoods, and we were a seed-putting program.

We were a prevention program.

And I think as community, we need to start welcoming parents.

We need to start opening these kinds of forums where we educate 'em that when your kid is a teen, yeah, they're asking you to step aside.

They're not mature enough to be an adult and make adult decisions, and a lot of the times, we as schools and other places, we're forcing them to think like adults, and yet they're at a developmental age where they're also not six years old.

So they do need to have that balance between monitoring them and guiding them, and I think some parents, they emancipated.

They left really early.

There were things in their own life, so they really don't know how to parent beyond this age, and this is a difficult age to begin with.

Even if you're a teenager that comes from a two head household, middle income, this is a difficult age.

So let alone those kids that don't have both parents, they don't have parents that have any of that.

So I think the more we as a community start inviting parents and have supports, have respite, if there is that single mom or that single dad that is overwhelmed, can't cook for his kids, can't feed 'em, what are we doing as churches?

What are we doing as schools to bring those parents and come along and be able to do that?

So I think mental health is that big taboo, and I think if we can start talking about it in those communities that already are in our communities.

I know in my communities tons of Zumba classes, and I've gone out to some of those places and I've said, "Hey, did there's this, this, and this?"

That's a place where maybe moms that are stay at home moms have, that's a good resource right there.

There might be other places, fishing between dad and son.

If we can, as a city, start doing activities like that, then we can start bringing in these topics that are much more difficult to talk about.

- Joelle, do you mind talking about what adults, whether they be parents or teachers or coaches, should be looking for to spot teens that are in trouble or headed that way in terms of mental health?

- Just they know their teen the best, so if they are seeing any kind of change, whether it be they're starting to isolate more into their bedroom or they're not interested in an activity that they've always loved, maybe a change in friend groups, maybe it could even be a change in music or what their online habits look like.

Maybe that's changed.

Just their mood overall.

Maybe they don't care about academics and they used to, or maybe they're starting to really go hard on the academics and they never used to do that.

Just any kind of change.

- A change in behavior.

Kristi, did you wanna- - I wanna jump on it.

I wanna challenge parents.

Don't be passive in your kid's life.

What we need you to do, we need you to look in their backpack.

We need you to say, "We're gonna do a phone check."

We need you to say, "You're going to be with this friend.

I'm gonna call and make sure that you're actually there."

We're so afraid of offending our kids and their being mad at us that we just go, "Well, we were all teenagers.

Maybe they'll live through it, too."

So I'm saying you've got to be involved, and you can't be afraid for your kid to be mad at you.

- Seth, you have a different way of putting that, that parents should use as their, what?

Their models.

- Model.

- Prison guards.

- Yes.

Most definitely.

- [Becky] Talk about that.

Well, it's very similar to what you just said.

Toss the room, check their phones, look under the bed, know who their friends are, know who they're associating with at home, away from home, at school.

Understand it doesn't matter how great your kid is, and we all believe that our kids are great and they're awesome and they'd never do anything, but those influences that they have outside of the home are very, very pulling.

They really can influence them way beyond what our capabilities are sometimes at home.

So stay on top of 'em.

They may hate you for a little bit, but it was already mentioned.

These kids, they really do want parameters.

They don't wanna just be bouncing from curb to curb.

They want to know what they can do and what they can't, and they may throw that fit when those rules are forced upon them, but in the end, they know it's the right thing, and it develops them as adults.

And I just agree, yeah.

Be the prison guard.

- I think even a little further than that, just to piggyback on both of what both you said is whatever happened to neighbors helping out with your kids?

What happened to community?

We've gotta get back to that idea that we look out for one another, that we look out for our neighbors, that we look out for our neighbors' children, that we know each other, that we come together for the common good, right?

Just to make sure that everything's okay.

And I understand sometimes that's hard because it's not my problem.

It's not my business.

If I go tell this person that I saw their child doing A, B, or C, they're gonna be mad at me.

Well, sometimes be brave and bold.

That's okay.

It's okay.

- Mark, you have experience working with addiction, but you also have experience as a pastor and as a parent of grown children.

If you were gonna give advice to parents of teenagers, what would you tell them?

- Be involved with your kids, all of the things we've just been talking about.

Don't be a distracted parent, no matter how life may throw you difficulties or whatever.

Allow your kids to see your own difficulties and how you deal with them.

Give them any these example that shows them you can survive a disappointment.

You can miss an expectation.

You can lose a job.

You can lose a loved one.

Help them understand there is a pathway through all of those things and let them see you do it.

Don't hide those things from them.

Just be involved.

That is the most essential thing.

Don't second the responsibility as a parent to a church or a youth group or anything else, a gang.

Don't second your parental responsibilities somewhere else.

Don't be distracted as a parent or self involved as a parent so that your kid believes, "Hey, they don't care about me anyway," because that's the assumption when you're not involved with your kids.

They don't care.

- We just say that hear them.

They want to be heard.

A lot of my kids, when they come to me, they wanna talk to me, and I'm totally stranger to them, but they feel like I'm not gonna judge them.

I'm just gonna listen to them, so hear them out.

They told me, like, "My parents understand what's going through my life.

They don't have time for me."

I think we all are give the same suggestions is just give them time.

Involve with them in some kind of activities where they can open up to you.

Also make sure that we also talk about our own stress with them so that they are able to open up their own feelings with us.

Instead of saying, "Okay, when I was your age, I had a lot of stress and I passed through it.

You will do good."

No.

Just say, "Okay, how do you feel?

What's going in your life?

And just share with me."

We don't have to give them the solution, but we just have to have them think that there is someone who is gonna support them no matter what happened.

So this is what I wanna suggest.

Also educate ourself as a parent about different mental health condition, like through these kind of platforms here or go and read the book on self-help books or different kind of topics because if we educate ourself, then we'll be able to model and educate our kids.

- We have talked a lot about out social media tonight.

It's interesting to note there was a recent survey by the research organization Common Sense Media that found that the overall screen use among teens increased by 17% between 2019 and '21.

And I feel like there's strong agreement on the part of this panel that the single most important thing a parent can do is protect their teens, is to be a filter.

It used to be a lot easier to be a filter before social media.

Kristi, I'm gonna start with you.

Can you give specific suggestions about how parents can filter the information that their children are getting?

Whether it be the pornography or?

Anyway, you go.

- Well, okay.

I think like he said was you have to educate yourself.

Kids are smarter than we are when it comes to social media and phones and things, tablets.

If you take a phone away, they get a burner phone, or they can figure out how to use an iPod or an iPad or anything like that.

So you have to educate yourself.

And then I think what you've gotta do is you've gotta set boundaries and you've gotta set rules.

Don't give your child at six years old a phone that is fully loaded and they can access anything.

They can browse anything because what they're gonna do, and I'm gonna jump from six years old to like 12-year-old boy, they're still only thinking with a 12-year-old brain, right?

You might say, "My kid would never do that.

They're not gonna look at YouTube for adults.

They're only gonna look at YouTube for kids."

That child is going to say with their 12-year-old brain, "Nobody's looking over my shoulder.

I'm gonna look at YouTube or I'm gonna look at TikTok," and they're gonna go ahead.

So be aware of what's out there.

Limit the access to things.

See what's not only age appropriate from the experts.

Also put into play things that you know your child.

- Do you think that you need to put filters on phones or restrict how much time kids spend on phones or devices?

- Absolutely.

I know for myself during the pandemic, whenever my phone would tell me that I'd been on the phone for seven hours that day, and I'm like, "How do did that happen?"

And I'm aware that I need to be watching what I'm doing.

So anytime that you can put a filter, you can put a time limit on.

You take those phones up at night because kids, other kids that don't have any restrictions could be texting them or calling them in the middle of the night.

So it's disrupting sleep.

It's affecting all kinds of things.

So any children watching, please don't be mad at me, but your parents need to be restricting and putting filters on and taking phones up, not starting too early.

Once they're in trouble with the phone, don't be afraid to take it.

I know that's their lifeline and we're not trying to cause additional stress, but if you don't set a boundary and hold to that boundary, you're gonna lose it on other things.

- Maggie, you're nodding your head.

- Well, to be preventive, I think it starts with a relationship.

If you know that device is important for them and you take the time to stay with them and say, "I don't know much about the phone, but what are the things that you do?"

And start as a parent to allow the kid to open the door to what worlds they're getting into.

As a parent, your gut is gonna tell you, "This is pretty dangerous," or, "My child is looking at this or looking at that."

I usually get the parent that is already upset 'cause the child's already doing severe things, and then they yank the phone from them, and just like she said, some other kid is gonna give her that student a phone that she can connect when there's internet.

And so just taking that away from them may not be enough, but if we wanna be preventive, it really is gonna be where the parent has a relationship with the child and has this communication that this device, it could be a loaded gun.

So this can open doors to so many other things, but it has to stop with empowering parents, giving the parents their role back.

I think in a lot of schools and in a lot of agencies, we've taken the power of the parent, and I think we have to give it back to them, and we have to say, "Who better than you?"

- But it doesn't start with when they're a teenager and they're flipping out.

- Yes.

Yeah.

- It starts with when they're a little person, - Yeah.

- and you have to have a relationship and you have to be open about things and you have to watch, and I'm with you on the social media aspect and the phone.

I am not a techie person, and everyone in my life knows I'm not, but I don't have that ability to not be techie anymore.

I have to know what my grandchildren are involved in.

I have to know when they get a phone, and don't give it to 'em at six.

We all made it until we were older without one.

But when you look at even 75% of pornography for kids comes through gaming.

- Gaming.

- And when we put our students in front of the TV and go, "Good luck to ya, have a great day.

I'm busy.

I'm on my phone, doing my own thing."

Are checking and paying attention, just like she said?

Are we checking and holding them accountable?

Who are they talking to?

- Joelle, you had mentioned that exposure, particularly to pornography was giving kids a skewed view of what sexuality is all about.

Do you wanna elaborate on that?

- Yeah, we're seeing kids talk about things that we would've thought would've mortified them, and they're talking about it like it's normal.

They are at times videoing each other in class in a private moment, and I just mean like a kiss or something like that.

But where normally that would embarrass them or it would be private, it's like a show for other people.

So it's skewing what's normal and what's not.

- What's not normal, yeah.

- Just to add onto it.

So I've seen people like when in the past where the child cries, parents give them the toys.

Now they give them the smartphones, and once they get the smartphone, the child stop crying.

So the addiction or this start at very, very young age in nowadays, and that plays a role.

Other part like we are discussing about social media use and pornography, social media has normalized a lot of things.

One of things, pornography, I think, so yeah.

Those are one of the like few side effects that, as a parent, unfortunately, we cannot do a lot, but whatever we can do is like limit the screen time or install some of the apps which filter the website.

That is a good idea where to start from.

- So this is a call to parents, and I wanna thank all of you all.

We've run out of time.

Tonight, you have heard from some local experts representing schools, mental health facilities, substance abuse and sex trafficking organizations, and law enforcement.

There are many organizations in the Permian Basin to help teens and their families who find themselves in need.

We're gonna put them up on the screen for you to look at.

They're also available on our website, which is basinpbs.org.

Our thanks to none tonight's panelists.

Dr. Mark Alexander, Dr. Muhammad Saad, Lisa Bownds, Kristi Edwards, Joelle Bracken, Maggie Navarette, Mike Gerke, and Seth Herman.

We are grateful to the Springboard Center for generously underwriting tonight's town hall.

We also wanna thank our Basin PBS board and staff, along with the Elizabeth Reid Yeager family and the Anwar family for their generous support of Basin PBS, and we wanna thank you, our valued viewers.

If you wanna know more about our local programming or become a member of Basin PBS, please visit our website, basinpbs.org.

You'll also find some resources on tonight's topics there, and please tune in to Basin PBS a week from tonight, Thursday, April 7th at seven for a special edition of "One Question" in which I will be talking to author and historian John Meacham.

Thank you for joining us tonight.

I'm Becky Ferguson.

Goodnight.

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