ROCHESTER, N.Y. – Teen mental health and substance abuse will be the focus of a forum at Rochester’s School of the Arts this weekend, just weeks after a student took her own life by walking off the roof of the school.

“We need people who are talking less and listening more so, the goal is to have the youth talk more and have us adults listen more,” said Che’ Hagins, coordinator of Rochester’s My Brother’s Keeper (MBK) Initiatives.

Shamir Ellis and DaJuan Jackson, RCSD seniors and fellows in the city’s MBK program which focuses on building safe and supportive communities for teens of color, will lead some of the discussions at the forum.

“If you don’t have the right structure and the right support, it’s really easy to fall through the cracks, it’s really easy to just give up,” Jackson says.

Even as strong youth leaders, they’ve faced their own mental health challenges. The pandemic triggered issues for Ellis, “for me, it’s like Covid kind of plunged me into like this depressive state, I wasn’t caring about work and stuff like that,” he recalls.   

Jackson deals with anxiety, “me sitting across from you right now, it just speaks volumes to myself and what I’ve gone through but I think it’s like, you’ve got to find likeminded people around you,” he tells News10NBC Investigative Reporter Jennifer Lewke.

Hagins emphasized the importance of not being afraid to talk about what you’re feeling, whether it’s with a likeminded friend or an open-minded adult. “I realize that we project more than we reflect, we project our experiences, and we know how we got through them and we expect them to do the same thing not realizing that there’s a lot of variables that intersect and also make it difficult,” Hagins says.

The conversation at SOTA will also address how mental health can impact physical health, such as the startling rise in vaping among teenagers. “The reason I bring up the smoking thing is because a lot of people do feel helpless, a lot of people resort to that because they feel so helpless,” Jackson says.

Social media’s impact will also be discussed. “It kinda spirals you, thinking that you’re not enough, thinking that what you’re doing is not sustainable and it isn’t helping you get to a point that you want to be in life,” Ellis says.  In addition to the discussion, resources will be available for teens, parents and anyone who needs them. The forum is free and open to all. It starts at 11 a.m. at Rochester’s School of the Arts.

To sign up for the forum, which is being hosted by the City of Rochester and the Rochester City School District: Click Here

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