BANGOR, Maine (WABI) – On Thursday Husson University hosted the Second Annual Youth Mental Health Summit.
The summit was created for high school students by high school students.
“We have a group of high school students that come and give some of their time over the summer to volunteer and learn about health care and careers in health. And we have a special group that our student managers who help us coordinate the program and part of their experience in the summer is to create a passion project. They get to choose something that they want to make an impact around in the hospital and a couple of summers ago that was around mental health,” said Stacey Coventry, Director of Community Engagement at Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center.
“We kind of wanted to focus on not just helping those struggling youth in the emergency department. But preventing more children, our peers, from having to go in and having those mental health crises. So, this was kind of built to give our peers coping strategies for mental health and kind of like start that conversation,” said Ada Sinclair-Steele, a student at John Bapst Memorial High School.
The summit included a guest speaker and workshops, some of which included different methods of therapy.
“Talk therapy is great and we want kids to open up and talk, but sometimes it’s hard to just sit across from somebody that you don’t know and start talking about your mental health matters and challenges. If you go around today in those sections where there’s modalities happening like art therapy. They were the chattiest, talking to each other and connecting with each other,” said Coventry. “We have yoga, and mediation, we have dance, so we have a wide variety of different modalities to help our students, but also conversations happening to ignite and spark a dialogue.”
“I think it’s something not necessarily talked about enough, which is why so many people are struggling with it today, like before the guest speaker came in today. I kind of thought being afraid or telling other people your fears was kind of a sign of weakness, but it really is quite the opposite, something so empowering, and it really made me feel less alone because I realized that other people probably have the same fears that I do too. I think just like. Spreading awareness and knowing that you aren’t alone is really important,” said Emme Nguyen, a student at Bangor High School.
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