NEVADA VIEWS: Helping kids cope

The passage of Senate Bill 249 during this year’s legislative session represents an enormous victory for mental health across the state. The bill, which was introduced by state Sen. Marilyn Dondero-Loop, D-Las Vegas, will allow students excused absences for up to three mental health days and will also ensure contact information for mental health resources is printed on every student’s school ID card.

This new law could not have come at a more opportune time as we prepare to resume full in-person learning this fall after more than a year of disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Few people disputed the fact the pandemic lockdowns would have mental health effects for everyone, especially the young. We had our entire lives sidelined beginning in March 2020, when normal routines came abruptly to a halt. Important activities such as playing on sports teams and being able to look forward to milestones such as homecoming, prom and graduation were curtailed. Everyone we know experienced increases in feelings of anxiety, loneliness, uncertainty and depression.

Now that normal life is resuming in many ways, it’s incredibly exciting to think about returning to school and all the activities and in-person gatherings we missed out on over the past year. However, for some of us, the return to “normal” social activities itself brings its own mental health challenges. We can simultaneously be excited about seeing our friends again and diving into the busy schedules we had pre-pandemic and feel nervous about the return of regular social life.

Some of our peers report feeling stress as they anticipate the return to school or talk about the exhaustion they feel after a day spent socializing after so many months of relative isolation. The fact is that the pandemic shutdown was a huge disruption, but the return to normality requires its own adjustments — even if they are welcome ones for most of us.

While the long-term effects of the pandemic remain to be seen, one constant is the fact that ongoing education around mental health remains crucial to safeguarding the lives of Nevada’s youth. That is why Hope Means Nevada, a community-based initiative of the nonprofit Nevada Medical Center, has worked diligently to raise awareness of the importance of youth mental wellness since it launched in the spring of 2020. Our message is simple: Mental health education is suicide prevention, full stop.

As peer-to-peer resources for teens across the state, our focus is reversing the youth suicide trend in Nevada by inspiring a culture of empathy and advocacy around mental health. In addition to testifying before the Nevada Senate education subcommittee in support of SB249 this spring, Hope Means Nevada’s teen committee members work year-round to spread the word that it’s OK not to be OK. We envision a world where everyone has a mental health toolkit they can access whenever they need it, and also to normalize the fact that seeking help for mental health challenges is as important as seeing a physician when you’re ill or visiting the emergency room if you have a broken bone.

As we look forward to the 2021-22 school year, plans are underway for mental health awareness and suicide prevention campaigns in collaboration with the Life is Beautiful festival and the Memory Walk for Hope in September, as well as our second annual Rising Hope Festival in November.

In the meantime, we wish to remind our peers to remember to “Ask5”: check in on five of your friends at least once a week to make sure they’re feeling OK and connect them with mental health resources if they are struggling. Most of all, we urge everyone to be kind to themselves as we all go through the process of resuming regular social interaction.

Mallory Kurtzman is a Hope Means Nevada teen committee member who attends Del Sol High School.