DANVERS — In its latest effort to promote mental health support, DanversCARES has collaborated with The NAN Project, a non-profit mental health awareness organization, to provide community-based mental health support training through a seminar focused on how adults can identify and help youth with feelings of depression, anxiety, or suicidal ideations.
“Each of us can play a role in suicide prevention,” NAN Project Clinical Director Donna Kausek said. “And tonight we’re gonna give whomever it is that comes some information on how to recognize that maybe your youth is headed for trouble, and how to respond to that.”
The NAN Project, created in 2015 in memory of Nan Cavanaugh, who died by suicide in 2012, is an initiative to increase understanding and acceptance of mental health challenges. The organization fosters mental health awareness and suicide prevention in middle schools, high schools, and colleges with peer-to-peer support, professional development, and community speakers.
The Monday seminar, which now has a recording available online, focused on the potential warning signs for a youth’s worsening mental health, as well as how to act as a trusted, respectful, listener when having difficult conversations surrounding depression and suicidal ideations.
“Kids need trusted adults to be able to talk to when they have a concern about any type of subject,” David Thompson of DanversCARES said. “They want to know there’s someone there that they can trust that will listen to them, won’t judge them, and hopefully be able to give them some guidance.
“We want to help kids understand that there are adults out there that want to help and can be trusted to help them. This training is designed to give adults the skills necessary to help youth when they need them.”
Some of the main changes in youth for adults to watch out for include spending more time alone, loss of motivation, energy, concentration, appetite, or failing grades. Often, it’s the trusted adults who spend significant time with youth, such as parents, teachers, or mentors, that will be particularly capable of noticing these changes in behavior, making it all the more important for them to make an effort to reach out.
“When you have a relationship with a youth and get to know them, you can pretty much use your powers of observation and listening to know that something is going on. Even if you don’t know what exactly that is, it gives you the capacity to start a conversation — and that’s our hope for what trusted adults will do,” Kausek said.
The presentation also emphasized how being a reliable, trusted adult, does not mean being a perfect person with all the answers. Rather than a life coach, oftentimes what youth dealing with depression or anxiety need is someone who is able to listen to and understand them, and have a non-judgmental conversation about what they’re dealing with.
“It’s okay to not have the answer,” NAN Project Assistant Director Lizzy MacLellan said. “It’s okay to say something like- ‘actually I don’t know the answer to that’ or ‘I’ve never dealt with something like this before,’ but you can figure it out together.
“And that could be a way to show to a young person that there’s going to be times in your life where you don’t necessarily know things, and that’s okay.”
The full seminar can be viewed on the Danvers Community Access Television YouTube channel at: youtube.com/@DCATDanvers
Michael McHugh can be contacted at mmchugh@northofboston.com or at 781-799-5202