Make teen mental health a priority with local experts and resources

Whether within Kane County community schools, libraries and other mental health facilities, you can find mental health resources and programs close to home that help provide social and emotional fulfillment for teens today.

“Positive mental health is building a social network to rely on when you’re going through hard times,” says Kim Peterson, director for community health for the Kane County Health Department. “They need that for when conflict arises. It helps them feel more confident. Participating in sports, playing music in the band and sharing interests around others is always positive for youth mentalhealth. And the schools have had to cut some things like art and music so they’re implementing other ways after school to help kids organize.”

Maria Dripps-Paulson, executive director of the Kaneland Arts Initiative,” says any art-related venue or medium is good for students to understand emotions.

“Art gives them a safe place to express themselves, whether it be art, band, choir, orchestra, dance, theater,” she says. “All of those are emotional entities, because in order to do them you have to pour in creativity and a little bit of yourself and feelings.”

The Aurora Public Library often partners with the National Alliance on Mental Illness for its programming.

“We’ve had them come out and do workshops,” says Flannery Crump, a teen library at the Aurora Public Library. “When we have mental health programming we try to involve some kind of healthcare professional to make sure the information being provided is accurate and coming from a reputable source.”

The Aurora Public Library has conducted teen programs focusing on meditation, general wellness and yoga as well as organized chill hangout sessions and hosted tabletop role-playing games where teens can be creative and social, have fun and make friends.

“Some of these events provide an incidental benefit,” Crump says. “For example, gaming programs allow teens to learn those kind of social skills with peers through coordination. We also have space where teens can socialize online that are monitored by our own Discord server and we do live programming through that program.”

The Aurora Public Library also has an outreach program where teens visit the ALIVE Center for teen-led tutoring and mentoring as well as learn life skills like stress management, healthy cooking and nutrition.

“We are happy to promote what we do because so much of what we do is available free of charge,” Crump says. “You don’t have to pay up front an admission fee to go to any of our programs and it’s always nice to get the word out about what we do.”

The Geneva Public Library has learned that it’s volunteer program for teens - Volunteers - has proven to offer social and emotional fulfillment for its participants.

“Our Volunteen program for sixth through 12th grade (students) teaches teens how to make a schedule, be on time and follow directions,” says Geneva Librarian (Teen Services) Kyle Peters. “I’ve seen some kids come in who started in 2015 and they’ve grown up a lot through that time, which is really cool.”