Mental health was a central issue in Indiana's 2023 legislative session.

Senate and Role Act one was passed in part to improve access to mental health services in Indiana and support the 1988 crisis response line.

All this at a time when an increasing number of children and youth encountered challenges with school within their peer groups and at home, there are significant mental health issues, including youth suicide.

The effects of adverse childhood experiences and changes brought on by the recent pandemic.

Indiana's youth suicide rate has been higher than the national average since 1999.

And in northeast Indiana, research reveals that one in seven youth will encounter the death of a parent or sibling by the age of 25.

Since 1993, Erin's House for grieving children has provided a safe and nurturing environment for children to process their grief and will learn more about Erin's House, its expanding outreach to serve more teens and young adults, and its broader work as a community grief center.

On tonight's primetime.

And good evening.

Im Bruce Haines.

With us today is Debbie Meyer, the executive director at Erin's House for Grieving Children.

And Debbie is joined by Dr. Matthew Runyan.

He is chief of psychiatry at Parkview Psych Parkview Behavioral Inpatient.

And now that those words are out, I will say hello.

And that's a lot simpler.

Dr. Runyan Debbie, good to see you both.

Hi, Bruce.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you very much.

And happy anniversary.

Yes, first of all, yes, we're celebrating 30 years.

That that is an amazing.

It just goes like it was yesterday, plus one or two.

Yes.

At the most.

Yes.

And maybe it would help as a place to start to go back to the future a little bit.

And talk about 1993 and the creation of Erin's.

So Erin's House was created out of a need in our community.

Children's grief centers was a new concept.

We were the 32nd one to open up in the United States.

Erin was a little girl who died just before her sixth birthday.

And out of that grief, the Junior League of Indiana and Junior League of Fort Wayne put a task force together and they did a feasibility study and they decided that Fort Wayne needed a grief center.

And we started we were the first one to open in in the state of Indiana.

Today, we're the only standalone children's grief center in the state of Indiana.

And gosh, we are helping 800 individuals a month are coming to Erin's House right now.

Wow.

What services are available?

So we do have on site services, peer support services, where the families actually come to Erin's House.

And those go from ages 3 to 18.

And then we do school programs, classroom companions.

And so we go to the schools.

We'll also do crisis response.

When there's a death in the school, we go to the school, we help the teachers, the administration.

We do educating for the teachers.

You know, sometimes the teachers like, what do I do with this?

The desk?

What do we do with the locker?

And so we go in and we help them through that.

Then we have the identity program, which focuses on the zip codes with the highest drug overdose and homicide rates.

And so we are going to you, Wilson Center.

We're going to the Renaissance Y.

And that program is just has really grown.

And then we also do camps.

We were speaking before the program about in the context of 1993, that death was perhaps not as much a function of mental health or suicide, but perhaps it was even more on the side of something medical or something tragic with within a family, it's always been there.

What have you sensed is the experience of Erin's house and Doctor ask you the same thing of where we were in these terms 30 years ago relative to now.

Has the script flipped?

Yes.

You know, it still happens.

But same some families, they take the pictures down of the person who died.

I one example, my grandmother died and my uncle was nine years old.

They sent him away for two weeks and came back and everything was gone.

Everything of his mom's was gone.

And and we didn't talk about it.

And I think it was one of those things where kids were just like, Oh, they'll be okay.

They'll be all right.

And and as kids, I don't want to talk about dad to mom because mom will start crying.

You know, when if Dad's died, mom will start crying.

So those little ones are actually protecting mom and they're holding that all in.

And it comes out sometimes in their teens and adults.

And grief is hard.

You know, we were talking before as adults, when somebody passes away, you see a wide range of reactions, you know, the six stages of of, you know, loss.

But they all happen at once.

You know, you don't just naturally progress through all those.

And that's as adults.

So as kids, not only are you in, say, middle school and hormones are happening and, you know, I got homework and my friend group but now you have a loss of usually a very important person in your life.

How do you react to that plus all the other things going on?

Plus, you're looking at your parents, as Debbie said, you know, if they start crying.

How do I do better?

You know, how do I help them or how do I make this so that mom isn't crying anymore?

Or I can I can be stronger.

I don't need to cry.

I don't need to process this.

I'm just going to be fine.

That's one type of reaction.

Another reaction is I'm going wild.

I have too much emotion.

I just explode.

I'm getting in trouble at school.

I'm not going to school.

I refuse to do my homework.

I'm no longer performing.

Other kids just shut down.

You know, they might go to school, but they're just going to sit there.

You know, they might not be eating very much, you know, classically looks like depression, but all three of them are very typical grief reactions.

And we were talking before the show about kind of how in death overall is hard to deal with, you know, and some deaths are harder than others.

And I've been working with Erin's House since about it was 2015 or 16.

And looking back to some old numbers, it used to be much more prevalent, was like people dying from old age or cancers, you know, car accidents.

But what you would consider to be like a normal kind of natural death, not necessarily related to mental health and maybe 10 to 20% was actually mental health related.

And I think the last time I saw data was I think it was 2021 or 22, that it was almost completely flipped or about 80% or 70% of what Erin's House was seeing was more suicide, homicide, overdose, things like that.

And a minority of deaths of of their person was from old age cancer, car accidents type of what you would think of as like a normal death.

And so grief is hard, but when grief is related with mental health, it adds on additional.

What could I have done differently?

Why did they do that?

Why were we not good enough?

You know, a lot of additional weight, baggage and things to deal with.

So that's that's actually been something Erin's House has done a lot of work on, is to how do we adjust to that?

How do we try to work on helping our our volunteers, our staff and our other kids relate to each other and be able to talk about these more charged kinds of deaths and consequences?

Well, it sounds like one of the ways was to put the doctor in the room with some of these these students.

Yeah.

So Dr. Matt came knocking on our door and said, I want to know what this place is about.

And we gave him mature and it was, okay, I need to get involved.

We always had this dream to do a program called Doc Talk where the doctor would go in.

We have a hospital room and the doctor would go into the hospital room and and sit down at the level with the kids and they could come in and ask him any question they wanted to ask.

They did?

Yeah.

They take you all kinds of different questions.

But then after a couple of years, then he started going into the teen groups and he would go in and sit in the teen groups.

And he came out a few times and he's like, every single time I go to that teen group, it's suicide.

They bring up suicide every single time.

So then he would go into the adult group to tell the adults, I've talked to your kids tonight.

Here's something that might come up, but that really gave us an insight of those teens.

And those teens really need more than what we were what Erin's House was giving him at the time.

One of the fun things that I did, I think I did on the fly, and I probably gave everybody a heart attack was I asked the teens, what's something I'm going to do in the adult room next?

Tell me something.

You want me to tell them anonymously?

You know that I can walk in and say, Your teenagers want you to know this about their grief.

And there's always a decent pause.

And then the answers are almost always, it'll happen to my time.

I'm struggling with it, but I'm doing my best and just be there for me when you when I need you.

And it's such a somber moment when I kind of say that.

And there's always a variety of how they say that.

But that's essentially the what it boils down to.

And when I say that in the adult group, everybody just kind of sits there and they're like, that's it.

Like, yeah, that's it.

That's what they want you to know.

They want you to know that they're not going to be as fast or slow as getting over this as their as their siblings if they ever do, if anybody ever does.

And that they're trying and they're really paying attention to you.

And so it was always an interesting conversation getting the teens to trust me enough to tell me what they want the adults to hear, and then seeing how the adults are like, Well, that's all we want to.

Yeah.

So how do we show that how to how we're all on the same page for what we think we need to do?

How do we how do we work on putting that forward so that everybody's on the same page?

How do we a lot of it is communication.

Okay.

You know, one of the things I tell both flip sides of the coin, but one of the things I definitively tell the adults is, you know, make sure they know that doors open the door of communication because you can't kick the door open and be like, you're going to talk to me because, you know, they're not or they will.

But it it can be the conversation you want them to have, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So have the door to communication open.

Hey, I'm here to talk.

And one of the ways of doing that is by showing it when an adult is struggling to show I'm.

I'm struggling.

I'm not.

Okay, right now, here's what you can do to help me.

You know what I would like to talk about some memories of our person, you know, because right now I'm struggling and I would like to do that.

And guess what?

The child is going to their mirror.

The same thing.

You know what?

What?

I'm struggling.

Maybe I should find my person and talk about things that would help me through that.

So it's it's a lot of communication.

Having a safe person to talk to, knowing what's the difference between hearing somebody talk and listening to somebody talk and when do we talk to our person?

You know, I've given a talk to my kids preschool to eighth grade class.

And it was the same talk I gave to the Allen County Bar Association two weeks later, which was essentially have a person never worry alone And listen, don't hear it.

I use different terms like in preschoolers versus lawyers, but it's the same concepts.

You know, it works for mental health, it works for grief.

It's just interpersonal communication.

And really the opposite of mental health struggles is connection, and it's connectivity and having people or connections or, you know, those relationships really helps us through anything that we're going through.

And so I think one of the things that Erin's House does better than any place I've ever seen is form those connections, especially with peers, you know, and going back to what we were talking about with the teens, teens especially have had peer groups in a form where, you know, it's always fluctuating there.

You know, we talked about hormones and whatnot and social media and struggles.

But, you know, teens are a special subset of kids, especially when it comes to grief, because they're not quite adults, but they're not quite kids.

So we can't just throw them in the volcano room where they get to throw things and tear things apart.

They may not enjoy that, but when you give them their own space, they flourish.

And so that's one of the big things that Erin's House has been doing with a big capital project is to focus on the teens and giving them as much support as they possibly can have.

And with those peer support groups, you've described them as as unique in what they do in unique and in what sense.

I think because you're not the only one at the lunch table at school in your mom's side, and it's your own prom dress shopping, and everybody else is going with your mom to get a prom dress and you're not.

And all of a sudden the other girls at the table are like, Oh, they either shut up, they don't you know, they don't they're whispering there.

And and that person feels very awkward.

And when those teens come to Erin's House, there is someone sitting there that's going through the exact same thing that they're going through.

We see it sometimes a trigger point is when teen boys are learning to drive and dad's not there to help them with that.

And one of the things when we were talking Dr. Matt was talking about communication is so just this weekend we have family camp, so the whole family is going to camp together.

And something as simple as we go back and we ask the the families that attend family camp, what is it that you like about camp?

What was the best thing?

And I'm thinking, oh, it's probably the really cool, you know, lanter.

I mean, they do really cool stuff and you know what?

It came up It came up that to play board game with the family, just eating popcorn and sitting down and playing a board game because sometimes that family isn't getting back together.

And so it's that communication piece of it that Erin's House is trying to build that family back together and open those lines of communication.

I was reading a piece from the Indiana Youth Institute, and I want to get your reaction to this because regarding communication, when we are talking with someone in our family, the phrase goes like this Contrary to earlier beliefs, talking to a child about suicide does not initiate suicide at all, thinking or increase the likelihood of suicidal behavior.

But do we carry that perception that if I mention it, that is somehow encouraging the thought when actually I might be prohibiting the same kind of communication that I would really like the experience?

Absolutely.

The research has shown for years that talking about suicide screening for suicide prevent suicide.

Not only does it catch people as a catch, but not only does it identify it's a better word, but we call them.

Not only is it better to identify people who are having suicidal thoughts, but it also normalizes discussion.

You know, and if if there's this big taboo about, okay, I'm having these thoughts and nobody's talking about it, nobody's asking about it, Wow.

I'm something's really wrong with me.

I can't let anybody know how bad this is.

It's just going to get worse.

So, you know, there's actual standardized screenings for pediatrics and adults, even with, like family practice.

If you go to a family practice doc and you get your pediatrician and your yearly exam for your child, there's a screening for depression anxiety that's required to be done because it's shown that that saves lives.

And if we have those screenings and we can identify people, hey, they're at risk.

We start talking to them, we try to get them into therapy, we try to identify, won't be causing this.

Is it something with school?

Is it, you know, just depressive symptoms?

Is a genetic is there, you know, situation DCS needs to be involved in opens up all kinds of doors for resolution.

But if we never discuss it, it will not get better.

There are some doors and some windows and some new space that is coming soon to be attached to Erin's House with its location.

And this also to encourage very particular additional sharing with a peer group.

Tell me about the wing.

So we're building and a building that's close to Erin's House, so it's kind of in our backyard will be 4500 square feet.

It's called the wing, and it'll be for teens and young adults.

Young adults are also, you know, that college age group.

That's a really hard age also.

And we're lacking support for college age.

So we'll be starting a program for young adults.

Also at the wing we're really excited about it will break ground in the spring and open in fall 2024, and they have their own place.

We have more on the way.

Take a look.

You never know what grief looks like.

You never know what people are going through.

Kids take on their parents grief and kids sometimes they don't know how to voice what they're feeling.

Losing like a close person to you.

You're different.

You think about things differently.

You go through things differently.

I'm the only friend at school that doesn't have a mom or a dad, so it's kind of like they don't have the same problems that I have.

So we can't really connect.

It's just overall nice to be able to have the people around your age that can help you cope.

They've all kind of experienced a similar thing losing a close one or a relative mix of my own age group, I feel is very important because like there's certain things I can't say around like 510 year old.

You don't want to make someone who's 14 and someone who's five.

They don't need to be interacted with in different ways.

My brother, he's in middle school on in high school.

So we have different experiences and being able to connect with people that have the same experiences as you, it it makes me happier not having to kind of go through problems I've already been through rather than going through problems that I'm going through and people understanding me and helping me through them.

Teens are kind of their own group, like they want their own thing, they have their own mindset.

They're almost adults, you know, they're at that point where they can think like an adult and they're carrying a grief a lot of times for the adults around them.

So they want that space that literally is separate.

They're learning life skills from each other that they will take on into the future.

They talk to people their own age and they see that, oh, my goodness, like, I'm okay, I'm going to be okay.

Like we're going to make it through.

And it's it's really powerful to watch that another way forward at Erin's House.

And we will be able to tell you in fact, we'll tell you now if you would like to learn more about bullying and find out more about how to contact Erin's House along the way, you can visit their website there it is, Erin's House dot org.

And we can continue to move forward.

It seems that at times it's hard as a parent to differentiate between these are feelings that I want to pay attention to.

They could be suicidal or it could be depression, or it could be something stronger, or it could be it's because I'm raising an adolescent and this is what I was told came with the job description.

Any any hints on how to separate one from the other?

I mean, it honestly comes down to function most of the time.

You know, there everybody has good days and bad days, but when the bad days start outweighing the good days, that's when radar should, you know, start paying attention.

When you get significant changes in behavior or people stop sleeping or sleeping more great.

Start changing.

Friends start commenting, Hey, so-and-so isn't around anymore, or they're only hanging out with maybe new and different friends.

Each of those individually is probably I don't have teenagers yet, but from working with teens, it's going to happen.

When you start piling them all together, that's where it really starts to struggle.

And so especially for teens, but also for adults.

To me, when we start looking for the the line to say, when do I need help, When should I be asking for help is when, preferably before, but when functionality starts to struggle, when people aren't able to take care of themselves, make sure they're getting the school or for the adults getting to work, taking care of your kids, making sure you have your appearance correct.

You know, obviously, if people are making statements about suicide or I feel depressed or what's the point, you know, things in that direction.

In that direction, absolutely.

But without that, as I said, the door being cracked open and saying, hey, I'm here to talk.

And that takes work.

It takes a lot of work to set up ahead of time to say, I'm safe, we're safe.

It's okay to talk about this stuff.

I encourage everybody to do that.

But it takes time looking for those types of warning signs can be very helpful.

And then what do you do if you have a concern, if you personally have a concern about yourself or about a friend or a colleague or a child or a parent, we've had calls for the numbers we're going to show shortly from youth kids calling about their parents to suicide hotline saying, hey, my mom has said this.

My dad told me this the other day.

I don't know what to do.

Well, here's what we do.

The month of November has been a rather poignant one relative to this topic.

And by the way, there is that 24 hour helpline available through Parkview, as you see the 800 number, another that you heard about at the beginning of the year through the legislature.

There it is, nine, eight, eight at 24 seven crisis and support line being made available.

There is also a telephone service that the Erins House is is connected to for counseling.

Yes, you can call Erin's House.

It or contact us through email.

Also all of this in a month where in Canada and around the world there is recognition of children's Grief Awareness Day.

That was November 16 and also later in the month on the 22nd.

I think it is.

You have a special event down at Parkview Field.

We do.

We call it Lights of Love.

And a person can purchase a scoreboard.

It's and put a picture and a note in memory of your loved one.

And it's really cool because families use it now as part of their tradition at Thanksgiving.

A lot of times you go down there and the whole family has gone down.

They're watching for the scoreboard and it's really grown.

And it's another way for communication.

You know, after they've been down there and they see it.

And I really want to also say that everything that we've talked about today with Erin's House is totally free.

There is no cost to come to Erin's House.

There's no cost for when we go into schools and we do crisis response, It's all the kindness of our community through grants and fundraisers and individuals in our community are so kind and understanding about about children's grief.

And so everything we've talked about is free.

And I think that's important for people to know because people will call and they'll they'll say, you know, a mom will call and say, I want to get my kids in there.

And it's always the first question, how much does this cost?

And as soon as we say there's no cost and I mean, like this is a couple of times a week, this happens.

And the person on the other.

Yes, sure.

Or they're crying or God bless you.

It's just.

Are you serious?

Yeah.

Yeah.

They are so overwhelmed with everything else going on in their life right now that to know that this is free for their kids and their family is really important.

And programing available in Spanish, too.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And so again, the child youth young adult, feel free and let's go ahead and share all the contact information you'll want to have literally for any day or week in the life, but also heading into our holiday season, which has its own struggles and challenges.

Erin's House there, Parkview Behavioral Health Institute.

You'll see their 24 hour helpline.

Write that down or again, just you can commit three numbers to memory.

You'll know that nine, eight, eight is is a way to go.

And where possible, the idea of questioning, persuading, referring, that's another technique the Parkview makes available.

You'll find more information to find them online and magically.

And we're having the time that we need to share.

But we're glad you did that with us.

Debbie Meyer is the executive director for Erin's House for Grieving Children.

And Dr. Matthew Runyan is chief of psychiatry with Parkview Behavioral Over inpatient and for all of us with prime Time, I'm Bruce Haines.

Thank you so much for this evening.

We'll see you back next week.

Good night.