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Comics that helped prevent teen depression before pandemic now targeting increased risks because of COVID-19

Chicago Tribune - 8/27/2020

Aubree Schmitt, 23, has seen a surge in youth suicides in her rural residential area. A native of Rock Falls, the second-year UIC graduate student calls the Sauk Valley area home.

Calling it a “heartbreaking” situation, Schmitt hopes the Path 2 Purpose (P2P) campaign can be of help with young people’s mental health. With limited resources and school sports on hold, the Path 2 Purpose youth adviser said, it’s crucial that adolescents feel heard and supported.

“This is an urgent situation,” Schmitt said. “Youth don’t have outlets right now because of the pandemic, and they’re reaching out to anyone just to experience some normalcy and do what they love to do, which we all know is best for their mental health.”

The last time Path 2 Purpose was in the news, University of Illinois at Chicago researchers had used data from a study of the same name to create Catch-It, an interactive online comic book that guides teens ages 13-18 through a range of mental health coping strategies. Now, Path 2 Purpose is helping teens with an online COVID-19-specific campaign, complete with pandemic-specific storylines, said Josh Gryniewicz, narrative strategist on the project.

According to Dr. Benjamin Van Voorhees, department head of pediatrics at UIC’s College of Medicine and Catch-It’s principal investigator, increasing risk factors for mental health problems coupled with reduced access to services and communities that could help build resiliency (schools, hospitals, churches) and strengthen mental health are why his team decided to pivot to the new campaign. If the study is the long-term UIC-based adolescent depression prevention program, the public health campaign is the short-term assistance needed in the current social climate. Young people only have to live in Illinois, Kentucky or Massachusetts to use the social media campaign, Van Voorhees said.

“We realized that we needed to have a way to kind of jump over some of these traditional settings like schools and medical practices, because kids aren’t in those places right now, and go to (the kids) directly,” he said. “We developed this idea of putting brief mental health messaging lessons online to build resiliency.”

He said he wants the 12-month campaign to hit every teen in the selected states at least once through social media. By meeting teens where they are and engaging them through comics with short, evidence-based mental health tips and techniques that are COVID-19-related, Van Voorhees hopes teens can better cope with the depression, anxiety and isolation the pandemic has caused.

“There definitely has been an upsurge in use of mental health services,” he said. “It’s a good thing that we have this infrastructure to do this care. We need a companion mental health response because the social distancing, the masking that we’re doing to protect everybody against COVID, really puts a stress on people. That’s what we’re trying to do -- counterbalance the adverse effects of the public health measures that are being put in place to protect us all against COVID-19.”

“That’s definitely part of my motivation to get this kind of content out there,” Schmitt said.

“At the very least, it can be a very positive influence to start training youth (in) resilience to the mental health struggles they face,” Schmitt said. “Teens ... if they did struggle with mental health before the pandemic, it’s being pushed a little too close to the edge now, a kind of tipping point because they aren’t experiencing that same type of stimulation or support that they’re used to.”

drockett@chicagotribune.com

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