[Noozhawk’s note: Second in a series sponsored by the Hutton Parker Foundation. Click here for the first article.]
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Benjamin Franklin famously said in advocating for Philadelphia’s first fire department.
He could just as well have been advocating for mental health care in Santa Barbara County.
Prevention can often be a secondary consideration in matters of mental health, but YouthWell founder and executive director Rachael Steidl has been working to reverse that order since the nonprofit organization’s founding in 2016.
Steidl has made it her mission to work with community stakeholders to address early intervention and prevention efforts so families in need are connected with available services before a crisis emerges. For her and her family, it’s personal.
“I grew up in Santa Barbara,” she told Noozhawk. “I had a company for 14 years where I worked closely with so many of our organizations, and yet when my own daughter started struggling with depression and anxiety, we could not get her the support she needed.”
Steidl recalled her surprise at the many barriers to accessing care, while also experiencing the frustration of hearing her daughter “was not severe enough and that there were others worse off.”
“When I started hearing similar stories from other parents, I felt like I needed to speak up,” she said. “When someone is brave enough to ask for help, we need to listen and we need to connect them to support.”
Further, she says, it’s important that youth and parents are provided mental wellness education and the necessary tools to manage their self-care.
“YouthWell is here to serve the community,” Steidl said. “Mental illness does not discriminate. We are focused on putting youth and families first, and listening to their voices in order to understand the needs, identify the gaps, and work collaboratively with our partners to leverage resources so students are not having to wait to get help.”
Santa Barbara-based YouthWell bands together dozens of health-care providers, schools, government agencies and nonprofit organizations to address the challenges, issues and gaps in mental health education, prevention and intervention throughout Santa Barbara County.
“The need for mental health education, the need for agencies to look at gaps in services, it’s really remarkable,” said Elise Fields, YouthWell’s community liaison.
“I’m quite blown away by what’s been accomplished these last few years.”
Among the accomplishments are SPOT parent support groups launched by the Mental Wellness Center so parents have a place to connect and learn tools to better support their teens. After connecting through the Partner Collaborative, the Santa Barbara Police Activities League stepped in as a partner to make the downtown Twelve35 Teen Center available for the meetings
MWC and Steidl also partnered on a youth project aimed at raising awareness and eliminating stigma on school campuses. The Wellness Connection Council has supported students who have started clubs at four schools: Carpinteria, Dos Pueblos, San Marcos and Santa Barbara high schools.
During its first five years, YouthWell focused on building relationships and trust among the partners. From there, YouthWell-inspired partnerships have been created with more than 40 community organizations with a joint mission to simplify access to mental health and wellness resources for youth and young people and their families, making solid connections through warm handoffs.
“It’s a resource that’s here for everyone,” Karen Kelly, a parent liaison to National Charity League and Boys Team Charity Santa Barbara, said of YouthWell’s reach and resiliency.
“It’s a place to connect. It’s an organization that evolves with the needs of the times. Rachael didn’t know we were going to hit a pandemic, no one did, but YouthWell shifted based on the needs of the community.”
Kelly requested additional workshops when COVID-19 took students away from their social safety nets. Quarterly workshops turned into weekly online sessions as students faced their computer screens more often than each other.
YouthWell’s virtual workshops open up conversations about teen mental health and are designed to empower parents, students and those working with them with tools that promote connection, wellness and self-care. Speakers cover a variety of topics, and Spanish interpretation is provided at each workshop.
“If they’re around their peers learning how to take care of themselves, if we address mental health issues there, that trickles down,” Kelly explained. “That impacts their future. That impacts the community as a whole.
“If we address mental health care and well-being as they’re growing up, there’s fewer homeless issues further down the road, fewer domestic violence issues and other societal ills that stem from mental health problems.”
The YouthWell website has begun serving as a clearinghouse for all things mental health and wellness with the development of its brand new Youth & Family Mental Health & Wellness Resource Directory. Fields heads up the effort to include all of the organizations providing services, including treatment programs, therapists and crisis resources.
“We have school counselors, teachers, resource navigators and parents who have been challenged these past years with being able to find mental health services because, up until now, this information has not been centralized,” Steidl said of the directory.
“Although it doesn’t replace the need for more services in our community, our hope is that it takes some of the stress off of those trying to locate resources.”
Nearly 100 agencies are already listed in the directory, which continues to grow. Organizations can share whether they have waiting lists, service fees or bilingual servies to make it easier for parents to find the right match for their needs.
Now well established with crisis resources and service providers, YouthWell is moving into the next stage of directory development: wellness program providers.
“The first path was to address the critical need for a centralized database of youth mental health services providers,” Fields said. “The next pass will be more on mental wellness and early intervention.
“Prevention really is the thrust of this, meeting students before the crisis.”
According to California Department of Public Health data, Santa Barbara County has the state’s 13th highest rate of suicides among youth (considered to be ages 15-24) among its 58 counties.
A recent Harris Poll found that 7 in 10 teenagers are struggling with their mental health as a result of the COVID-19 crisis. The same poll found that 55% of teens experienced anxiety, with 45% reporting excessive stress and 43% depression.
NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness) says 90% of individuals who die by suicide had underlying mental illness, of which 50% emerged by age 14 and 75% by age 25.
“I can’t imagine growing up in this time of social media, the digital age and the additional stressors that it creates,” Fields said. “I don’t know how I would have navigated it.”
Becky Bean, a student program adviser and social worker at Santa Barbara City College, said collaboration is a hallmark of the community.
“It’s wonderful knowing that we’re in this together and we’re not trying to keep replicating the same services but coming together for a stronger vessel for change,” she said.
“Santa Barbara is so passionate, so collaborative. That’s why I’m proud to be part of YouthWell. It’s a really healthy environment for creating sustainable change.”
Click here for more information about YouthWell, or to partner, utilize the resource directory, donate or attend the wellness workshops. Click here to subscribe to the YouthWell newsletter for updates about mental health in Santa Barbara County. Click here to make an online donation.
— Noozhawk contributing writer Jennifer Best can be reached at news@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.