On March 10th, our group was able to meet with Nell Rainy who is a licensed clinical social worker who works with the organization The Door. She said the reason why she got into this field of work is because she always loved helping other people and speaking with them about their issues. She also believes in trans generational missions which is what happens in our past or families sometimes we are the ones who have to work towards their goals.

A lot of people in her family struggled with mental health and addiction issues and she wanted to do everything she could to help her loved ones and others going through the same thing. Adding on to that, the company she works for, The Door, is a holistic youth space that is located in lower Manhattan. It was co-created by adults and adolescents in the 1950s meant to be a “shop for everyone’s needs.” Since teens were a part of the programming they were able to make something of the company that made sense to them.

Nell said that the pandemic affected the organization negatively and they lost many people that they were in touch with throughout because The Door works with many adolescents that are not very privileged and since everything went online and some people didn’t have the resources they had no way of seeking help. Nell says that Covid has resulted in a massive depression around teenagers that has not been addressed. She thinks that it can be difficult for people to open up about their mental health so they should be speaking with a person that they are comfortable with and connect with. Nell also practices syco-therapy and she tries to establish a relationship that is collaborative. She also says that talk therapy isn’t the only option for people . There are many other versions of therapy that people can try out and see which fits them best.

This was a very informative interview and my group and I learned so much. It was great to speak with someone who works with a successful organization that purely focuses on our topic.

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On March 4th my group and I had a great opportunity to speak with Dr. Lisa Damour. Dr. Damour is a clinical psychologist, author and podcast maker. When Dr. Damour was six years old and a friend of hers, Carla, moved from the U.S. to London around the same time. Carla was studying to become a psychologist under the guidance of, at the time, a famous psychologist, Anna Froyd. Young Lisa was spending many of her days with Carla and became fascinated by the practice. Carla explained all of her training to little Lisa which just made her even more interested. When Lisa moved back to the U.S. when she was seven she knew that she wanted to be a psychologist and she got her PHD when she turned twenty six years old.

Dr. Damour told us that she believes that the impact that Covid has had on adolescents has been awful. She says that the job that teenagers are given is to become independent and make friends and Covid has made that extremely difficult. She said that people who are less privileged and people who are already going through any sort of anxiety had another huge thing added to their lives that made their situation even more stressful. She said that the LGBTQ+ was also deeply affected by the pandemic and most of the time at their homes they were not accepted for who they were and school was a place to be loved by other people and they lost contact with that.

We asked Dr. Damour what she thinks is a step that parents can take towards helping their children with their mental health issues. Her response was very interesting. “I think we as parents should think about mental health in the same way we think about physical health.” She says we do lots of things to maintain our physical health and we should take that into account and use the same way of thinking and apply it to our mental health. She also thinks that there is a big misunderstanding with parents when they look at their kids’ mental health. They think it is a huge crisis as if it is a diagnosis, which is not the case at all. She also says that parents can have a lot of shame on their kids’ mental health and that is the worst thing you can do to yourself and more importantly your child.

Dr. Damour thinks that we can help as fellow teens by normalizing mental health issues to help people feel more comfortable around the topic. She really drilled into our heads the fact that there should be no shame in how you truly feel. This interview was incredibly inspiring and we are grateful for her words.

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On Thursday, March 3rd our group interviewed Libi Livant. Libi is an LREI student in 8th grade who my partner and I are good friends with. We asked if she was alright with us interviewing her on her input about our social justice issue, and she happily agreed. The our last interview was with Ty Beauchamp and he suggested that we speak with our peers about this issue because they have the most to say about it and he was correct.

A lot of the things that Libi told us we agreed with and related to. She said that Covid had hit her and all of her friends hard and that the pandemic changed her life forever. Libi was actually diagnosed with seasonal affective disorder. Seasonal affective dicorder is a disorder where you have uncontrollable mood swings of the changing of seasons. This took a huge toll on Libi plus the fact that the pandemic prohibited her from doing the things that make her happy, like seeing friends. Libi has found things like music that keeps her cheerful. She suggests that we normalize peoples mental health so that people will be more comfortable opening up about their feelings.

My group member and I truly connected with Libi and it was great to hear another voice similar to others talking about moving forward with this world wide problem. Interviewing Libi was a great opportunity to get more incite on our issue plus getting to know her better as a friend.

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On Wednesday, January 19 my group and I had a wonderful interview with Ty Beauchamp. Ty Beauchamp is a school psychologist who works here at LREI. Ty went through four years of undergrad school, studying psychology and public service. Ty did another three years of studying school psychology, then four more years to get his Doctorate in education.

In our interview we talked about how COVID-19 has affected adolescents. Ty talked about how he feels people are socially and developmentally behind. also how elementary kids have suffered a lot due to the pandemic, and that middle school kids are also presenting in a way that is behind. Ty also shared about how anxiety has increased so much, people who were never anxious before are anxious now. Also the same thing is happening with depression but anxiety seems to be higher.

We continued talking about the pandemic and how it’s caused trauma to people.. Ty further talked about how trauma looks different for everybody, and how it’s like a spectrum. People losing family members due to the pandemic can be left with a lot of trauma connected to covid/ the pandemic. Moving into mental health care, people now more than ever are seeking out therapists. He talks about his feelings on how schools should be talking about this more. In our interview Ty says “people need to be more flexible and understand that, whatever you were supposed to look like as a middle schooler you might not necessarily be there and that’s okay.”

We then asked Ty “Do you think that parents try to ignore their child’s signs of mental health issues?”. Ty responds by saying he feels that parents don’t try to ignore the signs but that they don’t know what the signs are. Ty goes on to talk about some of the signs that they talked about in a parent meeting, some were changes in eating habits, changes in sleeping patterns, and changes in mood and behavior. Ty further states how much our sleep can affect our mental health, and how too little sleep will affect your focus in school also affects how much you can handle your emotions. We have learned how sleep is very important for your mental health. He goes on to state that it is just as important to take care of your mental health as it is to take care of your physical health.

My group and I had a great time meeting with Ty and our interview with him was very helpful. We got so much good information from him and are so grateful that he let us interview him.

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On Friday, the 28th of January, our group had our very first interview with Ty Beauchamp. Ty is our School Psychologist who recently moved from Los Angeles, California who helps and meets with kids through grade 7 to grade 12. Ty had to go to under grad school for 4 years for psychology and public service which he enjoyed. He also studied for school psychology for 3 years. Finally, he went for his doctor education for another 4 years.

Ty told us that he believes that Covid-19 has impacted adolescents in every way possible and that people have a standard for teens to act a certain way even if they have been deprived of many things in their lives. He told us about how people who have never experienced anxiety or depression experience it now. He says many people are seeking mental health care and there aren’t really that many people to talk to. There are some other issues with that as well.

He says that it is hard to open up to a random person so people should go “therapist shopping” as he says to find someone that you like and are comfortable with opening up to. He suggests meeting with many people and seeing if you like the way they talk, if you find their voice annoying or if you think they are the right fit for you. We were brought to the attention that people never bring up mental health so no one ever talks about it. Ty says that parents don’t try to ignore the signs of their child going through metal health problems but they don’t know what the signs are. Eating/sleeping patterns and behavioral issues are signs that people don’t recognize.

We asked him for resources so we could speak to and ask questions or get more information. He introduced us to the TREVOR project, and he also brought up our peers. He says that everyone in our school building is comfortable with opening up because we are in a safe environment that speaks about mental health on a daily basis. He suggests talking to our classmates for which he thinks would be very useful to our project. He finds that if you dig deep and ask specific questions unlike “how are you” people tend to speak about how they are feeling more easily because they know you are really listening and care. He thinks that we should take more leadership in our project and start things like clubs or put up posters and meet with people which would make a huge difference in his eyes.

It was such an honor to have our first interview with Ty. It was very important that we spoke to him first so we would have some of the best information straight from a psychologist. We learned and heard about so much and because of his words we are going to have a great start to this project.

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