Stand Together 2016

Stand Together helps students talk openly about mental health

Nikki, a senior at West Mifflin Area High School, has battled depression for two years. Her father passed away when she was 9, an event she’s struggled to cope with for years. Feeling useless and overwhelmed, Nikki has contemplated— and even attempted— suicide.

Despite the potentially devastating consequences, many young people keep mental illness and addiction issues secret. The stigma causes shame and embarrassment for youth like Nikki, who experience its impact through social isolation, depression, suicidal thoughts and self-harm.

But they’re not alone. Nikki sought help and currently goes to therapy, where she’s learning positive coping strategies. And thanks to the encouragement of one special teacher, Nikki joined the Stand Together program.

Through generous support from the Staunton Farm Foundation, Allegheny County’s Department of Human Services (DHS) and Community Care Behavioral Health, Stand Together engages local youth through anti-stigma training and service learning experiences. These efforts reduce negative attitudes toward mental illness by uniting young people who have behavioral health challenges with their peers.

Earlier this month, the program showcased projects from middle- and high-school students at the Heinz History Center in the Strip District. Students from Arsenal Middle School, Brentwood High School, Propel Braddock Hills High School and schools in the Steel Valley and West Mifflin Area districts presented at the event; students from the Propel Pitcairn and South Allegheny districts also completed the program’s anti-stigma workshop.

Twenty students from each school planned creative service-learning projects from awareness campaigns and PSAs to videos, websites, school assemblies and community-wide events. Throughout the school year, 152 students worked on over 35 projects with a shared message of reducing the stigma associated with mental illness.

Through their projects, the students learned budgeting skills, cause marketing techniques, positive social media messaging, peer-to-peer teaching and how to use media like video and web platforms to convey their messages.

“The format of the Stand Together program not only teaches students about mental illness and the stigma associated with it, but it also helps students learn how to become community organizers and problem solvers,” says Holly Turkovic, Stand Together trainer and program director. “Project participation helped students learn how to overcome challenges and barriers and use their passion to create positive change in their schools.”

This year, Stand Together schools raised over $4,500 for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and Sojourner House, a local organization that provides addiction treatment services to women while offering a safe place for these women to live with their children.

Michael Gruber, system transformation unit coordinator with the DHS, measures outcomes of the Stand Together events. Gruber has observed that throughout the course of the school year, participants may lose some knowledge about mental health facts, but their social distance scores decrease, suggesting a higher willingness to interact with peers who have mental disorders.

He sees this as a hopeful sign: “This is actually what we are striving for— to have students see their peers with mental illness as people first and to interact with them in a variety of settings just as they would anyone else.”

Nikki is also hopeful. In an article for her school newspaper, she recently wrote, “A mental illness does not define you. You have to fight it and do what you have to do for you to thrive, not just survive.”