East End middle and high school students at center of new mental health program by OLA of Eastern Long Island

Young people are at the center of a new program from OLA of Eastern Long Island that seeks to help middle and high school students struggling with mental health or emotional needs — challenges many who responded to the nonprofit's survey said they faced while in school.

"The model of Youth Connect is that the youth is at the center, and then around them are those other entities that need to exist to help the youth thrive. So that would be parents, peers, school, mental health professionals and houses of faith," Minerva Perez, OLA's executive director, said of the new program that launched a few weeks ago.

OLA wants to bolster mental health resources for East End young people by offering bilingual crisis counselors to connect them with the support they need. This includes school-based mental health services or other educational assistance, or private services that might be available, depending on the student's needs and preferences. Perez says that Youth Connect is not limited to Latino students, even though OLA is a Latino-focused and Latino-led advocacy organization.

"A lot of OLA's work ended up being like the canaries in the mine. We're seeing people hit the hardest and realizing it's not just affecting Latino youth, it's affecting all youth that don't have adequate access to mental health" services, Perez said. Youth Connect is for everyone "in middle school and high school and those entities around them in our full East End," she said.

The program began at two districts — Bridgehampton and East Hampton — and there are plans to expand to five school districts by the end of October. The East End has 24 school districts, she said. 

OLA conducted a survey last year focusing on the mental health needs of mostly adolescents in the East End. It found that many reported having mental health challenges, such as anxiety and depression, tied to the "demands of school life" and their social interactions.

Stony Brook University's Center for Community Engagement and Leadership Development analyzed the survey, which included the responses of 271 people ranging in age from 11 to 37.

The majority of responses (69.5%) came from high school-aged students, who were asked about their school experiences. According to the university's analysis, nearly 75% of the respondents reported having experienced anxiety or nervousness, and 59% "indicated that they felt let down or hopeless at some point during their middle or high school years."

A surprising finding, said one of the report's three authors, Brooke Ellison, an associate professor in Stony Brook's School of Health Professions, was the apparent disconnect between survey respondents, who said they would recommend professional mental health services to others, but sought out family and friends for themselves. According to the survey, nearly 60% of respondents said they reached out to friends to talk about their mental health challenges, while just over 47% said they sought out family members or legal guardians.

"What is causing this reluctance among adolescents to seek trained professional help?" Ellison said. "That's an area that needs future research for sure."

To not overload staff, Perez said she was rolling out Youth Connect's helpline number, which students can call or text, slowly to individual school districts as they come on board. Though she was not divulging the number publicly, she said some calls and texts had come in.

Faith Evans, an OLA crisis counselor for Youth Connect, said she had fielded a text from a student who was exhibiting "anxiety about their grades. They didn't know what to do."

Mindful of the confidentiality Youth Connect provides, Evans said she didn't want to divulge specifics of the "successful" interaction with the student. "Instruction was given and this student said thank you and they were going to do exactly that."

After hearing a student's concerns, Perez said Youth Connect counselors would reach out to school officials, asking them: "What is your process going to look like to have this student maybe reduce some of the stress … Tell us what we can do … Then we're going back to the student and say, 'Listen, we talked to the principal. These are the kind of things they're going to be able to do. Will that help you, do you think?'"

She added, "We're not just going to throw that person over to the school and have them come back and say that didn't help because now I'm freaked out because they didn't know how to navigate all that. We're going to say we're going to find that out for you."

Because the program offers confidentiality, Perez noted not all callers would identify themselves, so a situation may play out differently, or a student may not want school officials to know their problems.

In addition to the helpline, Youth Connect is also developing workshops for parents, faith groups and others. Workshops with parents can help them learn how to speak to their youngsters about self harm or gender identity issues, for instance, Perez said.

School superintendents in Bridgehampton and East Hampton welcomed OLA's Youth Connect.

"They're a tremendous partner for us on the East End, in terms of emotional, social and academic support and needs our families and our kids may have," said Mary T. Kelly, superintendent of Bridgehampton schools, which has 200 students in pre-K through 12th grade.

"We are in the process of getting this up and running," Kelly said. "When that happens, we'll meet with families and get the information out."

Adam Fine, superintendent of East Hampton schools, says Youth Connect's focus on mental health is a critical need. "When I look at this program, mental health has been a huge thing in East Hampton," Fine said, referring to two deaths by suicide since 2013 of East Hampton students, and two more of former students.

"Social, emotional well-being is incredibly important," Fine said. He said the 1,830-student district is about 55% Latino, and offers a different dynamic than most people associate with the wealthy Hamptons, which some view as the "trendiest place on Earth. But we're a very diverse community. We're also a rural community. The resources you see in western Suffolk County or in Nassau don't exist out here."

OLA plans to enlist young people as Youth Connect advisers at the middle and high school levels. In the meantime, the group has already brought in young people to help in the program's development. While working as an OLA intern last summer, Emily Lupercio, 21, a senior at SUNY Geneseo who lives in East Hampton, helped organize OLA's Youth Summit last August that engaged with young people ages 13 to 22.

"We basically wanted it to be something for the youth to talk about mental health and emotional support care," Lupercio said by phone from college. And she could draw on her perspective, as a Latina and a young adult who was "just starting to recognize my own mental health [and] talking to my other peers about how COVID really affected us."

Lupercio said of Youth Connect: "We want students to feel comfortable … enough to access mental health care their school district has to offer."

Karen, a 16-year-old from East Hampton who interns at OLA and didn't want her last name used out of privacy concerns, said that Youth Connect provided an important way for young people to get help for any concerns they may not be ready to share openly.

"It's very private," she said. "That's something many teens need. I feel like sometimes teens aren't comfortable talking right in front of an adult. So they feel more comfortable with friends and others their age."

By Olivia Winslow

olivia.winslow@newsday.com@newsollie