That’s the name of a youth group that meets across three community centers in Springfield: New North Community Center, South End Community Center, and Martin Luther King Jr. Family Services.
It was conceived a few years ago as a safe space for teenagers to express their thoughts or feelings without feeling judged or dismissed, and to reduce the stigma around mental health for youth and families and promote the importance of a prioritizing a healthy mental state.
“We’re able to provide a space for over 60 kids to be able to come together on a weekly basis and talk about topics of mental health that are prevalent in their lives, and also around problem-gambling awareness and how that’s showing up in their lives,” said Tiffany Rufino, senior manager of the Youth Mental Health Coalition, a program of the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts (PHIWM).
“We also partner with Behavioral Health Network, and we have therapeutic mentors who come to each of the meetings. They’re another leader in that space, and they do one-on-ones with the youth, including goal planning. Whether that’s around mental health or their academics, or just different skills that they want to learn throughout life, we make sure they’re checking in with them on their goals and providing a safe space for having private conversations. And it’s been really great so far.”
Beat the Odds — as noted, a partnership with other area health organizations — is just one way the Public Health Institute has been working to tackle some of the most pressing issues among area young people.
In fact, in late 2023, it began developing its Youth Mental Health Roadmap for Western Massachusetts, which focuses on five distinct themes: destigmatizing and normalizing mental health, conversations around it, and seeking help; boosting social connection for teens who have become isolated and lonely; developing social and emotional learning to support mental health, overall well-being, and productivity in school and society; social media, recognizing its potential as a tool for connection and social support but also the ways it can be harmful; and connecting mental-health promotion and prevention strategies with clinical care when necessary.
These themes were developed with the input of youth health surveys in Springfield Public Schools, as well as input from Beat the Odds participants themselves, said Kathleen Szegda, director of Community Research and Evaluation at the Public Health Institute.
KATHLEEN SZEGDA
“With the shutdowns and the prevention measures, I think it was hard. And one of the studies that we cited deals with the impacts of social isolation in students and young people.” KATHLEEN SZEGDA
“These are the areas we’re focusing on for prevention and promotion, and we’re trying to better understand how can we support young people in these areas in the schools and community organizations,” she told BusinessWest.
PHIWM can also use the data to advocate for more resources for Western Mass., as well as policy changes at the state level.
“We’ve had young people at the table as part of the advisory group, along with different organizations who are doing prevention work focused on youth mental health and substance-use prevention, and people working in school districts,” Szegda explained.
“So it will have both the data from young people in schools about youth mental health, and also, on the same site, prevention and promotion strategies and examples of how some of these are taking place in Western Mass., because there’s so much good work going on, and we can learn from each other.”
Take, for example, social isolation, one of the Roadmap’s five focal points, and an issue certainly exacerbated by the pandemic.
“With the shutdowns and the prevention measures, I think it was hard. And one of the studies that we cited deals with the impacts of social isolation in students and young people,” Szegda explained. “Studies have shown that the effects can last as long as nine years later. So, if you look at it developmentally, as kids are developing, they are feeling these impacts for a long time.
“When I was looking at the data — and it’s both for Springfield Public Schools from the youth survey, and also data from our colleagues up in Franklin County, which is a more rural area — even before the pandemic, we saw a rise in ‘oppressive symptoms,’ where they report being so sad or hopeless, they stop engaging in their usual activities. During the pandemic, it was particularly escalated. And now it’s gone down a little and is kind of plateauing, or even going down a little. But we’ll have to see how that continues, both here and in Franklin County.”
Multi-generational Approach
Szegda said it’s critical that young people themselves have been involved in this process, not just through surveys, but at the strategy table with adults.
“It’s important. It takes an intentional effort to be able to do that, to have everyone in the same space.”
That’s the same philosophy behind Beat the Odds (BTO), which elevates the voices and concerns of area teenagers, but connects with their parents as well.
“We are engaging parents and guardians more, recognizing that we’re educating youth, but then they’re going back home to their parents and guardians, and we want to make sure they also have some awareness around what their youth are learning,” Rufino said, adding that the young participants are also building skills beyond emotional learning.
“We have subgroups. We have a group that’s focusing on content creation and communications and learning about public speaking. We have a group that’s learning how to become facilitators so they can deliver workshops to their peers. We also have an event-planning group; we’re working with a couple of other youth organizations in the community to put together youth mental-health events. And then we have our data-to-action group, which is working on learning more about the youth health survey, how to interpret data and the stories it tells, and things like that. So there’s a lot going on.”
TIFFANY RUFINO
“We’ve definitely seen youth being more open to talking about their mental health, which helps to destigmatize it so much.” TIFFANY RUFINO
As a youth-led organization, Beat the Odds also connects with other youth organizations and community nonprofits. Earlier this month, it put together Voices for Change: A Youth Summit for Peace at the Basketball Hall of Fame. And BTO youth will also be facilitating a problem-gambling workshop with middle-schoolers across Springfield, Holyoke, and other communities — a priority for the group, which receives some funding through the Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s Office of Problem Gambling Services.
“With the boom of online gambling, and with us now getting programs and actual trainings and workshops together, it’s taken some time to build those tools up, but now we’re ready to start educating our youth about how problems show up and parenting guardians so they know how to look for it too,” Rufino said.
Beat the Odds has been helpful not only for the young group members, but as a learning experience for the adults who are involved in various ways.
“Because we have such a welcoming space, I can truly say they open up to our program coordinators. They share a lot about what they’re going through,” said Rufino, who was named to BusinessWest’s 40 Under Forty class of 2024 for her impactful work with the Youth Mental Health Coalition.
“We’re also seeing, more and more, that the young people are requesting one-on-ones with the therapeutic mentors because they just have things they want to share with them, or they’re going through different things at school or at home that they want to talk through. So they’re using the resources that we’re putting forth, and they are vocal and open to talking about challenges that they’re facing.”
“They are also really excited about sharing information with the community,” Rufino added. “Through different tabling events, they have been super excited to be able to deliver training to their peers. So, really, the awareness and advocacy is what they’re excited about. And that’s good to see.”
Tearing Down the Walls
In fact, many of those working in the mental-health realm, especially youth mental health, have been heartened by a lessened stigma around these issues compared to one or two decades ago.
“We’ve definitely seen youth being more open to talking about their mental health, which helps to destigmatize it so much,” Rufino said. “And as the Youth Mental Health Coalition, we recognize that it’s been a multi-generational stigma, which is why we’re focusing on parents and guardians now.
“We’re doing a two-generational approach — educating youth and encouraging them to be self-advocates and recognize their feelings and what they mean and how to cope and help themselves and others, but then also doing the same with parents and guardians and educating them also about some of the things that their youth are learning.”
One of the coalition’s recent projects was called “I Am More Than My Mood.” That public-awareness campaign, seen on billboards, buses, and digital ads in 2023, aimed to destigmatize the subject of mental health and empower young people to talk about it — and, hopefully, take steps toward self-care.
“I think it is getting better, but we still have a lot of work to do,” Szegda said. “We have a lot of resources and programs that folks can join, but now we need the promotion piece, with the Roadmap and really making sure that youth and families know about the programs that are accessible to them — and getting youth to sign up and meeting them where they’re at, so we can continue to see them getting involved and finding meaningful things in their lives.”
The Youth Mental Health Coalition meets the third Thursday of every month from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m. over Zoom. The public is welcome to these conversations about what youth and adults are experiencing around mental health and what resources are available. Email Rufino at trufino@publichealthwm.org to receive a link.
