September is Suicide Prevention Month, and homicide rates and suicide rates in teens are continuing to climb, according to the Centers For Disease Control.
U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona made a stop at Cass Tech High School on Thursday to talk about mental health during his Back to School Bus Tour. He said funding is key to helping students who struggle with mental health.
“We provided $130 billion dollars to schools across the country to recover from the pandemic," Cardona said. “A lot of that money went to mental health programs.”
We also spoke with seniors at the high school. One of them told me that young people don't feel acknowledged by adults.
“It’s these small little things that add up to something bigger,” said Mari Montgomery. “A lot of times, adults struggle because of generational issues and their own trauma to meet students where they are. And they don’t take the time or even notice that there is that gap. And I think that causes a lot of the problems that we see grow.”
Montgomery is the senior class president at Cass Tech. She is a part of a focus group at the school that focuses on mental health advocacy for students.
Brizait Gonzalez-Rivera is also part of that group. When Rivera was younger, she struggled with identity with her sexuality — because she was attracted to women and her parents didn’t realize it.
“They had a lot of childhood trauma that they themselves are dealing with,” she said. “Now that I’ve grown up, I have learned to forgive them for what I felt as a young girl dealing with mental health issues, but during the time it was very sad to not have the support of my family and not have them recognize that I wasn’t feeling the best.”
The CDC says from 2007 through 2021, suicide rates increased in teens by 62% and homicide rates increased by 60% from 2014-2021.
Montgomery says this is no surprise to her.
“Like these mass shootings and increase in suicide rates are all, to us, it’s like, well we knew this was coming because we see it every single day," she said.
