Project
NAMI Sarasota and Manatee
To address the post-pandemic mental health crisis among youth in Sarasota County, one of the county’s Mental Health Needs Assessment Task Force recommendations based on their 2021 needs assessment was for the county to invest in programming to increase the availability of peer support specialists. Peer supports are people who have successfully navigated complex systems to sustain their recovery from mental and/or behavioral health conditions and help others experiencing similar situations connect to resources, reduce harm, prevent and manage relapse, and build self-care skills. Peer-led mental health supports are particularly important for children and youth considering that stigma is a well-documented barrier to seeking and delivering care, the relevance of peer support in countering self-stigma through the sharing of similar lived experiences, and the critical influence of peers during the developmental period of youth and young adulthood.
However, peer support services must be accessed and utilized in order to provide these benefits. Despite the existence of an array of peer-led mental health and recovery supports in this service area tailored to young people (e.g., drop-in centers, support groups, etc.), public agencies and nonprofit organizations providing these resources have noted decreased levels of service utilization post-pandemic. One of these agencies is Youth Move Suncoast (housed at National Alliance on Mental Illness [NAMI] of Sarasota and Manatee Counties), a local chapter of the national Youth Move program seeking to improve services by bringing together the voices of those who have lived experience in behavioral health, child welfare, and/or juvenile justice systems. Youth Move Suncoast offers peer-led services for children, youth, and young adults living with mental health conditions but has observed a marked decrease in participation in these services after the pandemic compared with pre-2020 participation numbers.
To evaluate and improve program offerings and/or program delivery strategies to re-engage this high-risk population, Youth Move Suncoast partnered Dr. McGladrey and the Voices of Behavioral Health Lab to help train their staff to conduct a Photovoice project to assess how children and youth understand their needs and desires for mental health/recovery peer support and whether and how these preferences have shifted with their experiences of social distancing and remote learning amidst the pandemic. Their efforts are being supported by a grant to NAMI Sarasota and Manatee Counties/Youth Move Suncoast from the Gulf Coast Community Foundation and Barancik Foundation and will be shared with the Sarasota County Behavioral Health Stakeholders Consortium in May 2023 (youth mental health month).
For further information, please visit the sites listed. For the Youth Move Suncoast/NAMI project:
Mental Health Month Presentation to the Sarasota County Behavioral Health Stakeholders Consortium
- Photos and captions from the Healthy Teens and Young Professionals Photovoice Group
- Photos and captions from the Teen Court of Sarasota Photovoice Group
- Photos and captions from the You Are Not Alone Center Young Adult Photovoice Group
- Photos and captions from the New College of Florida Undergraduate Student Photovoice Group