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In the spring of her junior year, Vania Torres’ home life went to pieces.

A close relative who lived with Torres and her parents in Milwaukie went through an ugly divorce and custody battle. Arguments raged. Then for agonizing weeks, it appeared the baby from that marriage would be gone forever from the family’s life. The importance of high school classes receded and her grades tanked. “The mood in the house was really sad,” Torres recalls. 

Adults at Putnam High, particularly her Spanish teacher, noticed and gently offered support, she says. Still, she failed the second semester of algebra.

Across Oregon each year, thousands of teens get derailed while on their path to a diploma. No matter the cause, each student who drops out represents a traumatic blow to that young person’s life opportunities — and one more tiny knock to the state’s economy. As recently as 2014, one in three Latino students in Oregon left school without a diploma. But the state’s high schools have managed to begin a promising collective turnaround.

In the final semester of Torres’ senior year, her principal summoned her to the office. Both assistant principals and three counselors were there too. Their message? She was at high risk of failing to graduate. If she didn’t pass algebra, there would be no diploma. She’d have to pull her grade up from a measly 4 percent to the minimum passing grade of 60.

But here was the takeaway: They believed in her. They knew she could do it. And Kathleen Walsh, principal of the whole school, was going to help her, starting with coming to math class with her a few times.

Instead of cut down or afraid of failure, Torres felt buoyed. “I knew that they wanted me to graduate and I had their support,” she says. “It felt amazing.”

Oregon has a serious graduation problem. As recently as 2014, just 72 percent of high school students earned a diploma in four years — one of the very worst rates in the nation. And among Latinos, the fastest growing group of students in the state, it was even worse.

And no school seemed to have the solution: Among schools with at least 50 Latino students, only a handful got 80 percent or more to earn diplomas in four years and none reached the 90 percent benchmark.

In the three years since, however, the state’s schools have managed a slow, steady march to better results. That culminated with the class of 2017, whose overall graduation rate showed the biggest one-year increase in recent state history — 2 percentage points to 77 percent, officials announced Thursday. And schools accomplished greater gains with Latino students. The 3 percentage point gain by the Latino class of 2017 capped an eight-point improvement over the past three graduating classes.

At the peak of the pack? Putnam High. Ninety-three percent of its Latino students walked across the stage last June to accept diplomas from Walsh, their very proud principal.

How did the North Clackamas school, where one in five students is Latino and more than half of all students are low-income, make that happen?

The playbook included a conglomeration of systems, programs and initiatives designed to promote student success and prepare almost all students for college. Putnam is an International Baccalaureate school and made a concerted effort to help all students develop the stance of an IB scholar — open-minded, risk-taking, reflective, principled.

At the heart of Putnam’s graduation success story, however, is an entire staff that loves kids and will go the extra mile for them.

The Spanish-speaking campus security guard whose main goal each day is getting kids to go to class on time. The gay white female teacher who connects with boys of color like few others. The assistant principal who shamelessly uses boys’ soft spot for making their moms happy as a lure to get reluctant seniors across the line to a diploma.

The school recruits and hires for employees like those, who bring big skills and bigger hearts to a job in which you’re only effective if students sense you genuinely care about them, says assistant principal Ryan Richardson. “It all goes back to relationships. If you have a relationship with a kid, they will work harder for you.”

Throughout high school, Farit Farias was dominant in front of his team’s soccer net, stopping opponents’ balls with what coaches and opponents called incredible saves. But after freshman year at Putnam High, he didn’t show the same confidence and determination in school. He never skipped class, but he just wasn’t that into academics. He wanted to be seen as a cool kid, he recalls. A lot of the time, “soccer is honestly all I would think about.”

Senior year, Farias was going to need to step up his confidence as a student and his work ethic in class or the diploma would elude him.

Cue Team Putnam, beginning with Caroline Spear, Farias’ creating writing teacher.

A Mexican-born immigrant who didn’t learn English until he started kindergarten in the North Clackamas school district, Farias had always liked to write. Just putting pencil to paper felt right. He thought he was good, but nothing special.

Spear showed him otherwise. He remembers the first major essay he wrote for her. A photograph showed a bunch of young Latino men gathered around a muscle car at a park. Their outfits and hair styles told Farias it was the 1980s. He thought about what he’d learned in history about discrimination and racism toward Latinos and immigrants decades before he was born.

Was it OK, he asked Spear, if he mixed in some Spanish words with his English? And judiciously added some explicit language, to make the writing “juicy?” Yes, she told him. He channeled the young men in his imagination as he wrote. He thought his piece was pretty good. Spear told him it was much better than that, enthusiastically praising specific aspects of his work. “She told me I have a gift,” he recalls. “It motivated me so much and made me realize I really did like writing. She made me realize I was good at a school subject, more than good.”

One day a note summoned Farias from class. He was to report, it said, to Richardson, the assistant principal, at a room he knew only as the place where lunchtime detention was held. Uh-oh, he thought.

But behind the door was all good — and not just because pizza was served. Richardson had assembled a diverse group of Latino and Latina students he noticed were influential in various circles at Putnam. He wanted to hear from them during occasional convenings: What was their experience at the school? What could be done differently to better serve students like them?

Farias hadn’t known most of the students well, but being in the group with them felt really good, he said. “I felt more included, more welcome at Putnam.”

Read more on OregonLive.com

Archit Baskaran remembers the pressure he felt during his senior year of university. He had long been the emotional support for a friend who dealt with mental illness, he recalled. And while he said his friend eventually found professional help, Baskaran became anxious, withdrawing from relationships and having panic attacks, an experience he detailed in a blog post published in August.

Baskaran said that while supporting his friend, he had put a tremendous amount of stress on himself. A therapist diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress disorder in 2017, he added. “The challenge I faced at the time was striking harmony between my own self-care and my desire to be a strong support system for my friend,” the now 21-year-old medical student said.

But in the midst of his realization and recovery came “shakti,” Baskaran said. The Sanskrit word for strength and power, Baskaran said he rose from the “ashes of trauma” to become a stronger person.

This past summer, Baskaran drew on his experiences to help build “I-AM SHAKTI,” a movement to help South Asian Americans face mental health challenges and share their stories.

The program plans to share stories of individuals living with mental illness to show the South Asian American community that those issues exist, according to Baskaran. Outreach plans also include speaking at houses of worship and South Asian student groups. Eventually, the group hopes to create a national database of South Asian mental health professionals organized by language so people can find culturally competent care.

“The vision and belief in I-AM SHAKTI emerged from the lowest point of my struggle,” Baskaran said. “I was going through this and felt my parents did not truly understand me. I was thinking about how many people might have it worse.”

Growing up, family friends saw Baskaran as a student on the road to becoming a doctor and a role model, he said. He added that those expectations made it more difficult for him to pursue help.

The model minority myth and stigma surrounding mental health care can keep people from seeking treatment, according to Dr. Vasudev N. Makhija, a practicing psychiatrist and founder and president of South Asian Mental Health Initiative and Network (SAMHIN). “South Asians have readily accepted the myth of model minority,” he said. “It reinforces their denial and the notion that they do not have mental health problems.”

Mental illness that is left undiagnosed or untreated can cause emotional distress and affect others, Makhija noted. He added that he has seen that some South Asians seek treatment when their issues are more advanced and severe compared to other patients. “At such stage, the mental illness is harder to treat, and it takes longer to respond to treatment,” Makhija said. “Early treatment can prevent unnecessarily prolonged anguish of not only the individuals but also of those around them.”

Makhija said some factors that can hamper access to care include affordability and difficulty finding culturally competent service providers.

To address some of the community’s needs, SAHMIN has created a directory of South Asian mental health providersin New Jersey that speak Gujarati and Punjabi among other South Asian languages, Makhija said.

According to the American Psychological Association, 1 in 2 Asian-Americans living with mental illness will not seek help due to language barriers. Data specifically for South Asian Americans is unavailable.

Yoey Cheng-Nguy, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine, said that although more Asian-Americans overall are seeking mental health support, research has shown that they are still three times less likely to seek help for mental health concerns in comparison to their white peers. “As mental health clinicians, we often receive referrals from general health practitioners possibly because it is culturally more acceptable to seek help for physical complaints rather than mental health issues,” Cheng-Nguy said.

Baskaran was diagnosed with PTSD in April, he said. During a family trip to Europe in July, he went through a relapse, he added. When he initially spoke to his parents about his diagnosis and challenges, they initially treated it as something he could fight and emerge from very quickly.

“Religion, spirituality, and community became common motifs for mental health recovery — my family defaulted to values they grew up with in India as a means of helping me through my challenges being Indian-American here,” he said. As his parents continued to research PTSD and mental illness, he said they noted that there were very few stories on the web about Indian Americans and mental illness. His parents were trying to help him, he noted, but couldn’t find resources.

“It’s almost as if mental health was deemed a ‘white person problem’ and not simultaneously a ‘brown person problem’ or a ‘South Asian problem,’” said Baskaran.

With support from his parents and peers, Baskaran started to develop I-AM SHAKTI to help those currently going through mental health challenges or seeking resources to support others.

Read more on NBC.com.

New York City first lady Chirlane McCray is taking on mental health wellness and substance abuse in the nation’s largest city, with the help of her fellow black sisters. Sisters Thrive, a collaboration with historically black women-led organizations, is McCray’s initiative to train 10,000 African-Americans in what she calls “Mental Health First Aid.”

According to the Office of Minority Health of the Department of Health and Human Services, blacks adults are more apt to harbor feelings of sadness, hopelessness, and worthlessness or feel that everything is an effort compared to non-Hispanic Whites. Those living below poverty are three times more likely to report serious psychological distress than those living above poverty. An American Psychological Association report identifies only 5 percent of the country’s psychologists as black.

Within the first year, Sisters Thrive hopes to amplify the national dialogue about mental health awareness in the black Community. Through “grace and grit,” McCray says she aims to “de-stigmatize mental illness and develop a more culturally competent mental health workforce.”

Her passion for this cause is personal, as she experienced mental illness and substance abuse challenges in her family as a child. She spoke to NBC News about how this affected her and why she’s teaming up with black women to offer free training to African-American New Yorkers wanting to address mental health needs in the their communities.

NBCBLK: Why are you committed to tackling mental illness in New York City, particularly among African-Americans?

McCray: Depression, alcoholism, and bipolar disorder are things that I experienced during the times that I was growing up. It really affected me and no one would talk about this. But I know that everyone I know has a story. Everyone.

How will Sisters Thrive work?

Sisters Thrive will train 10,000 African-American New Yorkers in Mental Health First Aid (MHFA) and develop a professional mental health pipeline to encourage a more diverse workforce. The six participating organizations will leverage their strong, influential networks to increase visibility at the local level, and encourage individuals to sign up for the Mental Health First Aid trainings.

Who are your sisters in this movement?

Sister’s Thrive marks the first time that a major city has tackled mental health with the collaboration of leading black women-led organizations with an international reach. They are Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc., Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., Eastern Area of The Links, Inc., and the Jack and Jill of America, Inc. They will also help us find spaces for these trainings as well.

Can you share why you chose these groups of black women to take the lead on this issue?

These women are very involved in their communities and champions of civil rights. They are caretakers. They are fighters. They fight for laws. They help create leaders and back our leaders. These are women who are activists in the most serious sense of the word so if we train them, not only will they be able to take care of themselves and their families, they are going to do so much for our communities and so much for our city and world.

Is there room for men at the Sisters Thrive table?

Of course we want to them to be part of this movement but we are starting with the sisters because women are the heartbeat of the home. Women are the heartbeat of our communities and so often the caretakers, single heads of households. WE know that. I start with sisters because I am a sister. We do have a plan to work with our brothers! Stay posted!

Ten thousand African-American adults to train in one year is a large amount of people in a short amount of time.  Why did you choose that many?

We think big! We’re ambitious. Our goal overall is to train a quarter of a million New Yorkers. We want as many people to have an understanding of Mental Health First Aid as people who have been trained in CPR. How many of us know what to do when someone has a panic attack? How many of us know what to do when someone is suffering from depression and can’t get out of bed day after day? We just don’t know, most of us. This is an understanding we should have.

Can you elaborate on skills trainees will learn?

This eight-hour education program, teaches individuals how to recognize and respond to signs of mental distress and substance misuse. Through ThriveNYC, any New Yorker can sign up to take the free course. Certification will be issued upon successful completion of the course. Each new person trained in MHFA is provided with tools to better support others, empower individuals to seek treatment, and make tangible steps towards elimination mental health stigmas. Every situation is different. But there are basic skills everyone can learn that the person involved does no harm to himself or herself or to anyone else.

With such a small percentage of African-American psychologists available, why do you think it’s important to have healthcare workers look like the populations they serve?

It takes so long to train people and we are not going to have the workforce we need overnight. That makes it even more imperative that we give people even the most basic skills. The more people that have these skills the better off we will be as people.

How will the trainers tackle mental illness stigma in the black community so people can feel welcome to seek services?

We try and meet people where they are. You talk about the African-American community and you have to talk about the church, right? One of the ways we’re doing the work is by training clergy members who have come to us because they are first responders. People trust them. We are going to give them training in MHFA by encouraging them to get some skills from our thrive team and help them.

Will this be affordable and accessible for all New Yorkers?

Here in New York, we’re fortune to have as part of ThriveNYC, a hotline number called NYC Well and its’ really the core of Thrive.

NYC Well (1-888-NYC-Well) and it’s really the core of ThriveNYC well is a health line that connects people to mental health care. If they call this number, [they will] get an appointment and the trained counselor will stay on the phone and make sure that the appointment is made. [They] will also do a follow up call if the caller wants that.

This service is free. We connect people to services that are not only as convenient to them as possible but they can afford that takes their insurance. If they don’t have insurance, we match them up with some city-funded appropriate source. We don’t turn any one away.

How will the mental health professional advisory group help Sisters Thrive?

We need to have this advisory group to brainstorm ways to that we can attract more people of color into the workforce and our young people. But also think we need to think about ways we can perhaps do what I call task shifting or task sharing, where we train people up in skills like motivational interviewing, psycho-education in addition to Mental Health First Aid, so people like me, like all of us here can do some of the jobs that are needed.

How can people get involved with mental health wellness who don’t reside in New York City?

We have Cities Thrive in all 50 states in the country and we also have Thrive London. All they have to do is contact NYC Well and be connected to Cities Thrive. We have a framework that has been adopted by a mental health organization called iCircle that will work for any city in any country.

Read more on NBCNews.com.

At the start of the new year, parents may encourage their teens to detox from social media, increase exercise, or begin a volunteer project. While kids may bristle at the thought of posting fewer selfies, surveys indicate 55 percent of adolescents enjoy volunteering. And according to a recent study, when it comes to helping others, teens may benefit psychologically from spending time helping strangers.

The study, published in December in the Journal of Adolescence, suggests that altruistic behaviors, including large and small acts of kindness, may raise teens’ feelings of self-worth. However, not all helping behaviors are the same. The researchers found that adolescents who assisted strangers reported higher self-esteem one year later.

“Surprisingly, teens who helped friends and family members did not report the same emotional change,” says Dr. Laura Padilla-Walker, a psychology professor at Brigham Young University and one of the study’s researchers.

The study, which included 681 adolescents between the ages of 11 and 14, examined how helping, sharing, and comforting others affected teens’ self-confidence. Between 2008 and 2011, the researchers surveyed the study participants yearly. Questions like “I help people I don’t know, even if it’s not easy for me,” and “I voluntarily help my neighbors,” helped researchers assess the various ways teens support others, while statements like, “I am satisfied with myself,” and “I feel useless at times,” helped the researchers evaluate the teens’ self-esteem.

Padilla-Walker says the study findings suggest there’s something unique about leaving one’s comfort zone to support someone you do not know. “Helping a stranger is more challenging than assisting a friend, and when teens take this risk, they feel more competent,” she says.

For many teens, the turbulent adolescent years bring social and emotional challenges like learning to resolve conflicts with friends, coping with peer pressure, and dealing with rejection. These newfound stressors can rattle their self-esteem. Witnessing their kids’ angst can be painful for parents who feel unsure how to help. However, Padilla-Walker says helping teens find ways to feel more self-assured can be immensely valuable.

In fact, volunteering may do more than boost personal morale; studies show altruism can help people connect socially, which may prevent loneliness, as well as alleviate mental health concerns, like depression.

These psychological benefits may be especially significant for teens, as studies show anxiety among adolescents has risen in the past five years. A recent mental health survey, conducted on college campuses around the nation, found that over 50 percent of students seeking psychotherapy suffered from anxiety. Research also shows that by the age of fourteen, 25 percent of teen girls and 10 percent of teen boys struggle with depression.

According to the American Psychological Association, young adults now face greater social and economic challenges than did previous generations. Between 1989 and 2016, over 40,000 college students completed a survey measuring their tendencies towards perfectionism.

Today’s young adults are more competitive and inclined to be perfectionists, expecting more of themselves and others. Perfectionism seems particularly harmful when one feels pressured to meet unrealistic expectations set by others. The researchers found that this “social” perfectionism makes students more susceptible to psychiatric concerns like eating disorders, depression, and anxiety.

“With the vast amount of information on the internet and social media, adolescents may feel like every choice they make — big and small —is an opportunity for failure. Even worse, they may fear that this failure is permanent,” says Dr. Abigail Marks, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco who works with parents and teens.

While altruistic acts may bolster teens’ wellbeing, many adolescents may reject the idea that they need a confidence boost.

“Recommending anything that may improve a teenager’s behavior always carries the risk of seeming condescending or critical,” says Marks. And when it comes to volunteering, suggestions made by parents about “who” and “how” to help can sound like a demand, not an opportunity.

Instead, Marks suggests that families discuss potential volunteer projects together. Even though it may seem impossible to communicate with a teenager at times, when asked to share their opinions they often develop interest. And connecting with this curiosity can help them identify an activity they value.

Read more on NPR.org.

National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week (NDAFW) links students with scientists and other experts to counteract the myths about drugs and alcohol that teens get from the internet, social media, TV, movies, music, or from friends. It was launched in 2010 by scientists at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to stimulate educational events in communities so teens can learn what science has taught us about drug use and addiction. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism became a partner starting in 2016, and alcohol has been added as a topic area for the week. NIDA and NIAAA are part of the National Institutes of Health.

Resources from NIDA:

• Find a NDAFW event near you!
• Check out these videos by NIDA and HBO’s film on addiction, then have a conversation about what you saw
• Toolkits for hosting drug-specific events like alcohol, college-aged and young adults, opioids and other prescription drugs, teens in the juvenile justice system and tobacco among others
• View the Spanish-language National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week toolkit: El Instituto Nacional sobre El Abuso de Drogas ha creado una campaña a nivel nacional para romper los mitos que existen entre los jóvenes sobre las drogas y el alcohol
• Order or download free booklets and educational materials available in English and Spanish like Drugs: SHATTER THE MYTHS (pdf), Drugs, Brains, and Behavior: The Science of Addiction (pdf), Family Checkup: Positive Parenting Prevents Drug Abuse (pdf), and more
• Learn more about NIDA’s National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week

More resources on drugs, alcohol, addiction, and recovery:

• Drug use prevention phone numbers and websites
• Johann Hari TED Talk: Everything you think you know about addiction is wrong
• A “New Vista” for Treating Cocaine Addiction brief article from the National Institute on Drug Abuse
• Alcohol and the Female Brain video presented by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism director Dr. George F. Koob
• What is a Good Addiction Treatment Program? article from Dr. John F. Kelly Ph.D. on PsychologyToday.com

“People are part of many different communities,” Dr. Clay Johnston says. “Not just their physical community, but also the communities in which they work, and in which they share religion and other cultural commonalities.”

The notion that individual well-being can be a citywide concern is changing how civic leaders approach the subject of community health and how community members support each other.

Dell Medical School director Dr. Clay Johnston and Hogg Foundation executive director Dr. Octavio Martinez discuss the utility and viability of community health care. Their combined experience as educators, practitioners and civic leaders makes for an illuminating exchange of ideas.

Mental Health in the Lived Environment

When it comes to addressing mental health issues at the community level, Dr. Martinez and Dr. Johnston agree on the necessity of situating clinical spaces in a broader context of care.

“At the Hogg Foundation, when we look at a community, we do concentrate a lot on what’s outside the medical setting,” Dr. Martinez says. “Where everyone lives, learns, plays and prays.”

Public health care paradigms that account for the social determinants of mental health don’t just expand the size and capacity of a community’s support networks. They also lengthen the time window for potential stewardship and aid, creating more opportunities for interventions that are preventative in nature, rather than prescriptive.

Unfortunately, as Dr. Johnston points out, prevention efforts are presently far more underfunded and underutilized than in-hospital care. “We’re waiting for things to get really bad,” he says. “We’re not actually upstream about how to get people out of that system.”

Constraining the boundaries of mental health treatment to medical settings, however, ultimately excludes facets of community life that can be equally vital to an individual’s well-being, and even recovery.

“It’s not just that interaction with your doctor, or the medication, or other non-pharmacological interventions,” Dr. Martinez says. “It’s also our lived environment.”

Building a Healthy City Means Building Connections

According to Dr. Martinez, improving the quality and availability of public services within a lived environment is one way to promote the well-being of its inhabitants. In a city like Austin, civic projects in this vein might aim to optimize transportation systems or incorporate more greenspace into urban areas.

Development executed from the top down, however, can falter if the base perceives itself as far-removed from potential impacts. Simple human-to-human connection thereby has a key role in making communities more livable, and thus, healthier.

“Engagement is very, very important to health, including—and especially—mental health,” Dr. Martinez says. “We’re human beings. We’re emotional beings.”

In order to achieve that baseline of humanity and connectivity, no population should be expected to conform to a lesser standard of care than another. “If we want to make Austin a model healthy city, the easiest and most appropriate way to do that is to focus on where we have inequities,” Dr. Johnston says.

“When you don’t examine how things impact the entire community,” Dr. Johnston continues, “you lose sight of what needs to get done.”

Learn more and listen to the podcast on the Hogg Foundation website.