The Solution to Arizona’s Youth Mental Health Crisis
The mental health conversation has boomed in the last few years as people across the globe have felt the mental toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, one voice that has been missing from that conversation is the voice of the youth, and in Arizona, students are facing the consequences of their voices being ignored.
“I think a lot of adults don't think teens can struggle with mental health. I've been told a hundred times, ‘you're seventeen, what do you have to be stressed about?’” said Riana Alexander, a high school senior in the Chandler Unified School District (CUSD). “I definitely feel like it's overlooked.”
Alexander is currently the President of Arizona Students for Mental Health, a non-profit “dedicated to improving mental health care for students around Arizona”. Alexander and Maya Lehti, a member of Arizona Students for Mental Health and middle schooler in the CUSD, shared the same sentiment that adults were leaving them out of important conversations that directly affect them.
“We're spoken for a lot of the time or spoken at, and not really spoken to or conversed with,” said Alexander.
“My teacher the other day she was just like, ‘yeah, you think you guys have a lot going on now, but you don't know what I went through,” said Lehti. “It's not a competition.”
One thing that Arizona Students for Mental Health is working to implement in the Chandler Unified School District is a Student Action Board, which would allow students the opportunity to be heard on a regular basis.
Alexander hopes that student involvement like this will push her school board to take more action, another reason why Arizona Students for Mental Health was formed.
“Last school year, so May, there were three suicides in the span of twelve days, and it was just like whoa, that's a lot, that’s too many, obviously, and nobody's doing anything,” said Alexander. “The school is not addressing it, the city's not addressing it, nobody's addressing it. And we just know that if somebody doesn't do something it's gonna get worse, so we had to. We just took it upon ourselves to do something.”
Kailani Higgins, another member of the non-profit and sophomore in the Chandler Unified School District, shared her thoughts on the generational gap between adults and students when looking at mental health.
“For adults to understand that their kids’ feelings are valid regardless of the situation or their age or whatever, it’s a big thing,” said Higgins. “That way kids aren’t, from a young age, internalizing those feelings and not learning to express them.”
Rebecca Carrier, District Coordinator for Tucson Unified School District, is one adult that understands the mental health crisis that students across the state are facing.
“There’s no way of sugar-coating that our youth are experiencing social and emotional learning delays and many, as a result of that, students’ mental health are negatively affected,” said Carrier.
While the state of youth mental health appears to be bleak, Carrier shared some insight to Jake’s Law, and how it is making mental health support for students more accessible and readily available.
“Jake’s Law is a hundred percent access all the time,” said Carrier.
The law, proposed by the JEM Foundation, and passed in 2020, “prohibits insurance companies from denying coverage for services that are covered by the plan simply because they are delivered in an educational setting.” Carrier noted that school districts, outside of her own, across Arizona are consistently working to better implement the Jake’s Law funds, supported by the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System.
Mental health advocacy groups like Arizona Students for Mental Health and the JEM Foundation are the reason that laws and changes can be made in Arizona to better support students and the youth.