Navigating through your teenage years is not easy. Now in her twenties, Fernanda DeLeon is a youth transitional program behavioral health navigator with Transitions-Mental Health Association (TMHA). She is helping launch a support group for teenage girls.
“Personal things that I used to have when I was younger was, you know, having the anxiety of, ‘I'm the only person with anxiety, I'm the only person with depression,’” said DeLeon. “Everybody else I see here, I see in social media is always happy. Like, why am I not always happy? ”
DeLeon is drawing from her own experience to guide girls during their teenage years.
“Our groups are going to be talking about body image, SMART goals, how to make progressive goals that are going to be helping our children in the future,” said DeLeon. “Starting your coping skills, learning how to verbalize those emotions and understanding them and understanding them.”
This program came to life after some concerning statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) back in February.
The Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends report found that 42% of teens were experiencing feelings of sadness or hopelessness in 2021; 57% were female students but when compared to 2011 the number jumped from 36% to 57%.
“When I see something like that, I immediately think: 'Do we have a program that's addressing that? And if we don't, how can we get one off the ground?,'” said Michael Kaplan, who is the community engagement director at TMHA.
According to the CDC, 29% of teens surveyed were suffering from poor mental health in 2021 — 41% of them were girls.
In that same study, 22% of teens reported having suicidal thoughts in 2021. Thirty percent of them were female. This was a significant increase from 19% back in 2011.
“I think the biggest part of having suicidal thoughts is feeling alone, feeling unwanted, feeling cast out,” said DeLeon. “I think with this program it's going to help a lot because we're going to have, again, children the same age, the same thoughts, that are going to be building this community their own. ”
The Women’s Legacy Fund through The Community Foundation San Luis Obispo County granted $24,000 to support this program for two years.
“The statistics are not good,” said Heidi McPherson, who is the chief executive officer for The Community Foundation San Luis Obispo County. “I think from our standpoint, we were really focused on how do we really shine a light on what are the needs of our high school girls, what are the mental health needs of our high school girls? And then how can we support TMHA in their work.”
Teens will be meeting for an hour every week.
“We really are hoping that TMHA is able to give these girls some tools to be able to face the challenges that they're facing,” added McPherson. “Coming back after COVID was so challenging for all of our kids and our youth are the future.”
The program is free, and it will start in late August.
“We'll do further outreach in the schools,” added Kaplan. “We have a wonderful high school program that goes on different campuses and provides a mental health curriculum in the local health classes. ”
The group will be a safe space for teens to share and learn.
“It's a first step to building those building blocks of being able to go out into the world and succeeding in your goals,” said DeLeon.
If you want to learn more about the teenage girl support group, you can reach out to TMHA by calling (805) 540-6500 or visiting theirwebsite.
If you or someone you know is facing a crisis, you can call the crisis line at (800) 783-0607.
