#CreateConnectCare
A Youth Mental Health & Well-Being Initiative
It's a Complex Issue
According to a large multi-year study conducted by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health from 2016 - 2019, “21.8 percent of U.S. children ages 3 to 17 have one or more of the common mental, emotional, and behavioral health conditions… .” These commonly diagnosed conditions vary and include anxiety, OCD, ADHD, and depression.
Beyond the diagnosable conditions, many more kids are struggling to manage “healthy emotions” in a very demanding and ever-changing world, which can be overwhelming for the best of us. The onslaught of messages via social media, for example, can lead youths to cycle through ten different emotions in one scroll of their feed. Add the stress of academic pressures. Economic demands. Climate change. Interpersonal relationships with friends and family. A world at war. It’s a lot! As an educator and a parent, I’ve asked myself numerous times, how are kids supposed to weather all of this?
I haven’t found an answer. I am not a mental health expert. I do know that mental health and well-being are complex because human emotions are complex, even at the best of times. Every single one of us is an amalgamation of joy, fear, sadness, anger, love, etc. We cycle through emotions at mind-blowing speeds and are capable of feeling any one emotion at any given time in conjunction with any other emotion(s). We carry our feelings with us through the years as we are marked by past experiences or triggered by singular events. These invisible etchings begin before we are even born into this world. When my 9-year-old brings me one of his drawings, I am overwhelmed by joy and love while at the same time feeling annoyed by the lack of time I have to spend with him and the stress of balancing a professional and personal existence.
#CreateConnectCare
In response to all the complexity of emotions experienced by our youth, Creative Visions launched the first phase of a youth mental health initiative. We are calling it #CreateConnectCare because it seems like those three words are intrinsically linked together. Invariably, artists create to connect with others; through that connection, people are compelled to care for one another. It’s a simple and beautiful formula, and we hope young people in all communities will latch onto it by submitting their creative responses to questions such as “What does mental well-being mean to you?”
This morning, I sifted through the current submissions for the CreateConnectCare initiative. I was stunned, moved, and warmed by what I saw. The work ranged from a simple but poignant line drawing of a young boy “leaving the bad behind” to a song by a teenage girl explaining that she was just “tired.” A young rapper chronicled the deaths from gun violence in his neighborhood, while another student chose to illustrate the uniting of hands to show that “we can accomplish anything with our own two hands.” As I scrolled through the manifold submissions, one thing became clear: through their acts of creation, these kids are showing us what they feel, how they feel, and why they feel. They are connecting with us, the grown-ups in the room who talk about them incessantly, often without even listening. These kids are not just joining our initiative but leading the conversation about an issue that touches them all in one way or another. They are also connecting to each other, finding one another, and learning that they are not alone. And in that moment, as I was sifting through the submissions, I felt the loveliest pang of hope and purpose. #CreateConnectCare is accomplishing precisely what it set out to do.
If you are between 11 and 18, please join #CreateConnectCare. If someone in your life falls into that age group, encourage them to join our initiative with their creative response. Submissions for phase one will be accepted through December 15th, 2023.
Miriam Scott, Director of Impact Education
Learn more at: https://www.createconnectcare.org/
