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Adolescence is a powerful time when individuals are discovering their identities. A recent study found that Indigenous youth were likely to experience more adverse childhood events in adolescence compared to youth of other races.

Although many of us may not be able to affect the number of risk factors in a youth’s life, we can play a significant role in strengthening protective factors. Research shows that increasing protective factors has more of an impact among Indigenous youth than decreasing risk factors.

Bringing awareness about mental wellbeing to the youth of tribal communities and Indigenous peoples does two things, according to Mental Health First Aid National Trainer Melita “Chepa” Rank, DSW, LCSW, QMHP: It reduces stigma and fosters wellness. Youth Mental Health First Aid (Youth MHFA) for Tribal Communities and Indigenous Peoples, a community-specific course offered by National Council for Mental Wellbeing, is the pathway to achieve both goals.

“The Youth MHFA curriculum empowers people to help one another as relatives,” said Rank, who assisted in developing the updated course. “The program affords people the ability to learn skills in how to respond when our relatives/communities need support. We must create the space to talk about our holistic health, especially mental health in youth, and begin to change the stories and reduce the stigmas that surround mental health.”

And support is needed. The Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health (Colorado School of Public Health) reports that 60% of Indigenous youth have experienced or are experiencing severe mental distress.

Youth MHFA for Tribal Communities and Indigenous Peoples is an evidence-based course that teaches adults how to recognize and respond to Indigenous adolescents (age 12 to 18) who may be experiencing a mental health or substance use challenge. This course is tailored for people who work with Indigenous adolescents, family members, friends and others who are connected to tribal communities and Indigenous youth.

Read more at MentalHealthFirstAid.org.

On Sept. 25, 2023, the Biden-Harris administration announced that it will be investing some $200 million in the youth mental health crisis. Since youth mental health was declared a national emergency in 2021, multiple experts, including the U.S. Surgeon General, have cited social media and the COVID-19 pandemic, among other things, as major contributing factors.

But what has not been talked about to the same extent, is how anti-Black racism is fueling the youth mental health crisis. Racism has a crucial impact on the mental health of Black youth, and the current mental health system is not equipped to address it.

The truth is that the effects of racism on the mental health of Black Americans start even before birth. The stress of racism experienced by Black mothers has been linked to low birthweight babies, which puts those children at greater risk for developing depression and other child mental health issues. Prenatal anti-Black racism can also have other persistent effects. Maternal reports of racism affect the socio-emotional development of Black children in their first year of life, with links to negative emotionality.

Indeed, Black children and adolescents are suffering at unprecedented rates, and have been for over 20 years. Black youth are dying by suicide at rates increasing faster than any other racial or ethnic group: Black children as young as five years old are 1.8 times as likely to commit suicide compared to their white peers. The suicide rates of other ethnic groups, except for Latinx and American Indian/Alaskan Native youth, have remained virtually the same or declined, even from 2019 to 2020 in the height of the pandemic.

Read more at Time.com.

Amid growing concerns over mental health among Latinos is a new push by counselors, celebrities, and influencers to provide access to treatment and create safe conversations within communities.

According to data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, in 2020, more than 18% of the Latinx community reported having a mental health condition. Among those, 1 in 4, or more than 24%, were categorized as having a serious mental illness.

Research available on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website also showed that 40.3% of Hispanic people experienced symptoms of depression, compared to 25.3% of white people. Latinos also face disparities in access and quality of mental health treatment, according to the American Psychiatric Association, which cites language barriers, lack of insurance and “lack of culturally tailored services and culturally competent mental health professionals” among the many contributing factors.

Beyond increasing access to treatment, therapists like Jacqueline Garcia are also working to erase the stigma surrounding mental health among Latinos.

“Begin these conversations with your family, your loved ones, your friends, and seeing how that language develops in your life,” Garcia, a licensed clinical social worker, said. “Because maybe you come from homes where this wasn’t talked about, it was invalidated.”

Read more at ABCNews.com.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement have raised consciousness about the country’s persistent health inequities, but one group is often overlooked in efforts to reduce these disparities: American Indian and Alaska Native people. Data reveal troubling realities about the long-standing and escalating mental health conditions affecting the 3.7 million people in this population.

Alcohol-induced deaths were highest among American Indian and Alaska Native people at 172 per 100,000, followed by Latinx people at 26.6, Whites at 25.8, and Blacks at 18.4, according to national data from 2016. These deaths could be caused by alcoholic liver disease, mental and behavioral disorders due to alcohol use, degeneration of the nervous system, or other conditions related to alcohol consumption (Spillane, S. et al., JAMA Network Open, Vol. 3. No. 2, 2020). The largest escalations in suicide rates from 1999 to 2017 occurred in American Indian and Alaska Native women and men, with increases of 139% and 71%, respectively. By comparison, the increases for White women and men were 68% and 40%, and even less for other racial and ethnic groups (Curtin, S. C., & Hedegaard, H., Health E-Stats, 2019).

COVID-19 also disproportionately affected tribal communities. They experienced the largest drop in life expectancy of any racial and ethnic group in the United States during the pandemic.

Although these health disparities may seem intractable, Native American psychologists suggest that progress has been slow in part because the mental health profession needs to embrace a new paradigm to better serve American Indian and Alaska Native people. “The traditional understanding of mental health issues and the models for treating them are still rooted in a Western perspective,” said Art Blume, PhD, a clinical psychology professor at Washington State University who is Cherokee and Choctaw. “In psychology, we focus on treating the individual and promoting autonomy as a marker for health and well-being, but this is not necessarily the worldview of Indigenous people.” Traditionally, many tribes have viewed the world as an interdependent system in which the cosmos, the natural environment, and the community are connected to wellness, Blume added.

Rather than adapting empirically validated treatments from mainstream psychology, Blume is among a cadre of psychologists who are calling for the development of innovative treatment approaches based on American Indian and Alaska Native values and worldviews. As a start, practitioners and researchers must embrace cultural humility and a willingness to learn how the history of subjugation, oppression, and dispossession has affected tribal communities, said Harvard University’s Joseph Gone, PhD, a professor of anthropology and of global health and social medicine who is also past-president of the Society of Indian Psychologists. “Our way of life was considered hopelessly backwards and savage, and we were expected to become farmers and ranchers and learn reading, writing, and arithmetic,” said Gone, who is a member of the Aaniiih-Gros Ventre Tribal Nation of Montana. “The deep damage from the loss of identity contributed to postcolonial disorders such as suicide, trauma, and addiction.”

Read more at APA.org.

Every day, Andre Rush, a retired Army officer and former White House chef, does 2,222 pushups. And every day, he thinks about what that number symbolizes: a tribute to the military veterans who die daily from suicide.

Rush’s ritual is more than just a tribute, however.

“It’s a reminder to never become complacent, that we still have work to do and we still have to keep going,” Rush told ABC News. “And you can’t stop. You can never give up on something that you believe in, especially people.”

The prominent chef, TV host and advocate recently joined “Face the Fight,” a multimillion-dollar new initiative launched last month to halve the suicide rate among veterans by 2030.

Established by USAA — a financial company for military members, veterans and their families — and an initial $41 million in philanthropic grants, the “Face the Fight” campaign is designed to raise awareness and support for veteran suicide prevention.

A coalition of corporations, foundations, nonprofits and veteran-focused organizations are involved, such as the Humana Foundation and Reach Resilience, an Endeavors Foundation.

Katy Dondanville, a clinical psychologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, has spent her career researching PTSD and suicide in veterans. She said the reasons why someone dies by suicide are complicated.

“What we know is that there is not one cause of suicide. It’s a complex interplay of risk factors and protective factors that impact every individual differently,” said Dondanville, whose program is getting money from “Face the Fight.”

Read more at ABCNews.com.

Ellisa Edeyaoch shared her struggles with pain, fatigue, illness, social isolation and mental health during her pregnancy were all worth it when she saw her newborn son, Elijah, for the first time. “No matter how hard it was for me and how unprepared I was, at that moment, in that split second, I remembered all of the good times I had while I was pregnant.”

Edeyaoch, a senior studying Pacific Island Studies from Micronesia, said she wished she had known more about the trials of being pregnant before her own experience after giving birth to Elijah in September 2022.

“The first trimester was one of the hardest months with school and with my mental health. … I was kind of overwhelmed,” she said. While working at the Joseph F. Smith Library, she said her employers were very understanding of her health condition, allowing her to have days off. However, she said she felt guilty for taking so many days off, especially from school.

Edeyaoch’s husband and Elijah’s father, Kaytano Edeyaoch, a BYUH alumnus who studied communications and is currently working at the Banyan Dining Hall full-time, said, “I am sure about 80 percent of our co-workers had no idea what was going on.”

He shared he had several pregnant classmates and saw them missing classes, but he said he did not know what they were going through until he saw his wife going through her pregnancy. She had days when she couldn’t even get out of bed, said Kaytano Edeyaoch.

Ellisa Edeyaoch said she felt lonely during her pregnancy but thought it was just a pregnancy hormone. Since the culture where she grew up does not consider mental health to be a real issue, asking for help was embarrassing to her, she said.

“I remember feeling very alone, but at the same time, I was too shy to reach out for help,” she added. Because she felt ashamed to have those feelings, she said she kept them to herself until she noticed it was affecting her schooling and work.

Read more at KeAlakai.BYUH.edu.