From left Kylie Kurta, 16, Jameela Jenkins, 14, Victoria Lauterbach, 17, and Charlee Sommers, 14, sit for a portrait during a SAVE Promise Club meeting at West Mifflin Area High School, on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024. The club is working to enhance mental health support and community to the school. (Photo by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)
Where transportation options, services and institutional supports abound, youth hopelessness was less prevalent. With two in five high school students reporting mental health difficulties, enhancing community resources could be a lifesaving proposition.
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A lifelong resident of West Mifflin and educator for 17 years, Rowe has witnessed firsthand the evolving social dynamics and challenges teenagers face daily. Now as the faculty sponsor for the SAVE Promise Club, she is helping to train students to make their school a safer place.
“Teens are in charge of a lot more than people know,” Rowe said. “I always say they are my boots on the ground. … They’re the ones seeing the behaviors in the bathrooms, the hallways, the stairwell.”
Rowe works in a community in which around half of high school students have reported feelings of hopelessness, University of Pittsburgh and UPMC researchers revealed in September. Similar numbers were also reported in eastern suburbs of Pittsburgh, according to the survey administered in 2018.
The researchers found that areas where large numbers of youth reported feeling hopeless generally had fewer community assets including health services, transportation options and educational centers. Their investigation also identified “bright spots” within the region, suggesting that some neighborhoods can transcend historic barriers to mental health resources.
Their findings were reported in the September 2024 JAMA Network Open.
West Mifflin Area High School’s chapter of the SAVE Promise Club, a national youth-led organization prioritizing school community safety, focuses on fostering conversations about gun violence, suicide prevention, relationship abuse and mental health struggles.
SAVE (for Students Against Violence Everywhere), which is affiliated with the Sandy Hook Promise, organizes community service events and projects, including a food pantry at the high school.
For students like Zech Barge, 16, and Jameela Jenkins, 14, the club offers a way to get involved in their school community and raise awareness for issues they are passionate about — particularly youth mental health.
“There is a weird idea about mental health that I have heard over the years. … ‘Mental health issues make you a weak person,’ but that is not true,” Jenkins said. “Some of the strongest people I know have mental health issues.”
The 2023 national Youth Risk Behavior Survey [YRBS] reported 40% of high school students experienced persistent feelings of hopelessness and 20% seriously contemplated attempting suicide.
These staggering numbers, coupled with the need for better mental health policy, inspired researchers at UPMC and the University of Pittsburgh to explore what community assets may be associated with youth mental health.
‘Nobody wants to talk about it’
By looking at what a community does well through a “strength-based approach,” the study focuses on what assets already exist in a neighborhood rather than a “measure of deficits,” said lead author Nicholas Szoko, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The study drew on data from three sources: the Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center, the Child Opportunity Index 2.0 database and the 2018 Allegheny County YRBS.
The density of community assets across 26 Allegheny County ZIP codes was calculated and classified into eight categories: transportation, education, parks and recreation, faith-based entities, health services, food resources, personal care services and social infrastructure.
Areas in which roughly half of youths reported hopelessness have a lower density of transportation, education and health services. Greater attention needs to be given to communities that have “for too long been under-resourced,” said senior author Alison Culyba, an associate professor of pediatrics at Pitt and adolescent medicine division director at UPMC.
The communities of Penn Hills, Homestead and West Mifflin have historically been underserved and classified as moderate- or high-need, according to the Allegheny County Community Need Index. These suburbs align with regions reporting the highest percentage of hopelessness as mapped by the study.
For West Mifflin Area School District, which serves West Mifflin, Duquesne and Whitaker, approximately 23% of students ages 5 to 17 experience poverty and 59% are economically disadvantaged.
“There are many times that we see not only are the students working to provide support for themselves, for the things that a normal teenager wants, but also that they’re providing that support and that money back into the family,” said Jennifer Shields, a counselor at West Mifflin Area High School.
In addition to financial hardships, many students experience anxiety and depression, Shields added.
West Mifflin Area High School provides students with a variety of mental health resources including the Student Assistance Program, which serves at-risk students who may be experiencing depression, suicidal thoughts or other struggles. But students feel the stigma surrounding mental health often deters their peers from seeking help.
“There is so much stuff going around and nobody wants to talk about it,” said Victoria Lauterbach, 17.
As a member of the SAVE Promise Club, Lauterbach is using her personal struggles with mental health as a catalyst to raise awareness and advocate for her peers.
“This stuff is real,” Lauterbach said. “It is OK to talk about if you are not doing OK. You are not the only one.”
Places to gather are key
Research has shown that a greater connectedness with one’s school and neighborhood can prevent the internalization of depressive symptoms. However, West Mifflin’s lack of certain community assets may make it difficult for students to socialize outside of school hours.
“I am desperately looking for a library and resource center as part of the community,” Rowe said. The borough has no public library within its borders.
Rowe’s feelings are echoed by her students who currently lack even a librarian for their high school library.
Other popular teenage hang-out spots include stores and the AMC Theatres at the Waterfront, but even these locations pose challenges for students after the implementation of a 6 p.m. youth curfew and supervision policy for all Waterfront property visitors under the age of 18.
Closure of the Century III Mall in 2019 meant shutting the doors to yet another spot where students once socialized.
For students like Jenkins, whose family does not own a car, transportation can be a barrier when it comes to after-school activities. Strict parents can also make hanging out with friends after school difficult, as there are “not a lot of instances throughout the year to go without [parental] supervision,” Jenkins said.
While the SAVE Promise Club helps students to become leaders in their school and community, many say they are unsure of how their efforts will play out after high school.
For the 2020-2021 school year, approximately 68% of West Mifflin graduates have enrolled in an institution of higher education, enlisted in the military or entered the workforce compared to the 76% statewide average. This reflects a steep downward trend for West Mifflin students since the 2018-2019 school year.
After high school, Lauterbach plans to go to school for nursing but eventually sees herself returning to her West Mifflin community.
For Jenkins, “It’s hard for me to imagine a future even after high school.”
School-to-support pipeline
Close-by, low-barrier mental health services allow youth to seek help without the stress of insurance coverage or familial pressure. UpStreet, a teen mental wellness program run by Jewish Family and Community Services [JFCS], offers free therapy and support for teens and young adults 12 to 22.
“The idea is just to make it as easy as possible,” said Erin Barr, director of JFCS Youth Services. “They [teens] don’t need to be a client. They don’t need to schedule an appointment. They don’t need to pay for anything. They can really just show up.”
UpStreet, located in Squirrel Hill directly across from Allderdice High School, is situated in an area with 20% to 30% of youth reporting feelings of hopelessness — the second-lowest percentage range identified by the study.
UpStreet’s services range from drop-in hours and brief online support with a therapist to routine therapy appointments and even a peer mentoring program.
In Pennsylvania, a minor age 14 and older can consent to outpatient mental health treatment without parental or guardian consent, making it easy for youth to access services like UpStreet.
Because UpStreet is within walking distance of Allderdice, it “couldn’t be in a better location,” Barr said. At times, some of the staff at the high school have even walked students to the center during the middle of the school day, Barr added.
For Maggie Doran, 18, UpStreet serves as a place where she could receive mental health support for herself while she also helps others facing similar struggles.
Through UpStreet’s peer mentoring program, Doran checks in with her mentee, a younger student, around twice a week. During their meetings, Doran shares guidance and talks through daily struggles with school work.
While UpStreet’s services are open to any teen, the vast majority of students who receive support come from Allderdice.
Squirrel Hill as a whole is a “pretty resourced neighborhood,” making UpStreet one of many assets to the community, Barr said. “Ideally every neighborhood could have something [like UpStreet].”
‘Bright spots’ warrant study, partnership
Out of the 26 ZIP codes included in the study, only two deviated from the prevailing trend linking lower levels of community assets with higher rates of hopelessness. Those two ZIP codes, 15204 and 15214, which include Sheraden and Perry North respectively, were in the lowest 25% of ZIP codes in terms of community assets but also had a lower percentage of hopelessness.
Those two ZIP codes show that there may be other factors at play to help support youth mental health apart from the assets addressed in the study. These “bright spots” could be targets for further study and community partnership aimed at translating data into impactful policy, Culyba said.
Questions like “How can we support these bright spots in the community?” and “How do we continue to grow these resources?” are important to ask, Culyba pointed out.
Moving forward, the authors plan to incorporate more youth voices in their research and have partnered with the Allegheny Intermediate Unit to reach additional communities within the county.
Because the YRBS data was gathered prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, Szoko and Culyba acknowledge that the relationship between hopelessness and asset density may have shifted.
“We anticipate seeing a higher percentage of mental health challenges,” Szoko said when asked about a new administration of the YRBS. “We are interested in looking at these assets and how they have shifted.”
Students at West Mifflin echo this, acknowledging that the pandemic and isolation worsened their mental health. But members of the SAVE Promise Club hope their outreach efforts and advocacy will make a positive impact on mental health for their school community.
“We are here to help. We are the group of kids to go to if you are struggling,” Lauterbach said. “Mental health can affect everyone. It has nothing to do with gender, political values, where you grew up [or] who your parents are.”
Amber Frantz is an editorial intern at PublicSource. She can be reached at amber@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Ladimir Garcia.
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