A Reflection on the Palo Alto Mental Health Dialogue
On Saturday, June 27th I held a dialogue on teen mental health in my hometown. This event was held in the context of a high incidence of teenagers in Palo Alto dying by suicide — four high school students have died in the past six months, in a “suicide cluster” pattern that is tragically familiar to the city. By using a dialogue format that I learned as a moderator for the organization Sustained Dialogue, my co-organizer Christina Chen and I created an opportunity for members of the Palo Alto community to share personal stories, hear from others with very different perspectives, and structurally gather a list of the core issues related to teen mental health in Palo Alto.
Those of us who grew up here have early memories and experiences with suicide deaths and mood disorders within the student community, and many of us have stories about the moment when we realized that this wasn’t normal. Growing up, I rarely had the opportunity for a substantive conversation on the topic — when I was in high school, my teachers were told not to talk to us about suicide deaths, and as a group we remained poorly educated on topics of mental health. Student, teachers, parents, and school district administrators did not often have space to communicate with one another directly — and this led to a lot of blame and not a lot of action.
In the past year, a community of alumni of Palo Alto high schools has arisen online to support current students. I discovered that, despite the time that had passed and the distances we had moved, there are many deeply engaged alumni who continue to seek solutions. Alumni have a wealth of personal knowledge in addition to energy and passion, and some of us now have experience in mental health advocacy. However, this community isn’t well connected with the community in Palo Alto that is taking action on teen mental health.
I connected with Christina through this online community, and we came up with an idea that could help to close this gap (and that we could pull together in the short time that I would be in Palo Alto). Our goal was to hold a productive dialogue that provided an opportunity for alumni to connect with the people in the community who are currently developing solutions. And the idea struck a chord: We announced less than two weeks before the event, posting on Facebook and emailing members of the Palo Alto community, and more than 900 people were ultimately invited to the Facebook event, with many others hearing about it by word of mouth. We are incredibly grateful to those who passed on our blurbs and encouraged friends and colleagues to attend — I would like to particularly thank Linda Lenoir!
In a very brief two hours (that stretched towards 3), we held moderated small group dialogues, followed by structured discussions about the causes of mental health challenges for Palo Alto teens and ideas for resources and solutions. Afterwards, representatives from mental health organizations gave brief announcements and stayed to network with the other participants.
The event was structured to give people space to “get everything out there” even if it was a little bit big and messy — because this is a big and messy set of issues. And I think we were very successful.
There were at least 60 people in attendance, including two on Skype and a few who walked past the Mitchell Park Community Center that afternoon and were struck by our flyer. About half of the participants were alumni, and the other half were parents, teachers, and representatives from organizations including: the Palo Alto Board of Education, Project Safety Net, the National Alliance on Mental Illness, Break Yo Stigma, Save the 2008, the ASPIRE program at El Camino Hospital, SELPA 1 CAC, Family and Children Services of Silicon Valley, and Project Cornerstone. We also received support from the grief counseling organization Kara.
9 volunteer moderators led small-group dialogues on topics including mental health stigma, education about mental health, race and cultural identity, Palo Alto community, and experiences with mental illness. When the dialogue groups reported back, Christina and I identified four big topics: Mental health stigma, academic and social pressure, knowledge and language about mental health, and resources and space for mental health care. We moved into spirited “root cause analysis” discussions and while we certainly didn’t come to any conclusions, we generated a lot of energy and ideas for future directions — and participants made some great connections.
Finally, at the end of a very full 2 and a half hours, people stayed to hear participants share about the mental health organizations they were representing, and the work they were doing to address poor teen mental health. During these announcements and the open networking that followed, I was reminded of the incredible resources available in Palo Alto. We were joined by a Palo Alto University professor developing online therapy tools, Palo Alto teachers with plans for new school policies, a thoughtful and passionate alum building a peer-to-peer support network, and a documentarian who is working on an exploration of Palo Alto teenagerhood, among others.
Reflecting on the day, I have great deal of hope. As the founder of the online alumni community put it, “The conversation is starting to shift from anger and blame to acceptance and authenticity”. The Palo Alto that I grew up in sometimes felt content to merely react to student deaths — but the Palo Alto that revealed itself in this dialogue is committed to identifying and addressing the root causes of poor mental health and suicide.
I learned that there is a real desire for spaces for conversations in which people can be vulnerable and share their fears, confusions, and mental health challenges. I learned that there is a desire for connection and networking between current and former students, teachers, parents, school administrators, and mental health experts and researchers. And I believe that true solutions can only be developed by people who have the knowledge and community support that these kinds of conversations bring.
The people who came to our event were energetic, devoted, passionate, and deeply caring. Informal feedback I have received so far has been positive and has had a sense of momentum — some people felt like they had been waiting for years to be invited to have these conversations. It feels like the Palo Alto community is headed towards a real turning point, and I am very excited to see what happens next!
To see more from the event, or to contribute your own reflections, check out #PAMentalHealth on twitter (and instagram) and the Facebook event page. Christina and others are working on follow-up events, which will focus on small-group dialogues with narrower topics. Sign up here to be kept aware of future events like this in Palo Alto.
Update: Family & Children Services of Silicon Valley published a blog post about our event!
