Education & Youth | Arts & Culture | Youth Arts Journalism Initiative | COVID-19 | Ignite The Voice, Inc.
A recent Zoom session. Ignite The Voice Photo.
Gabrielle Bynum knew from personal experience that you’re never too young to start taking care of your mental health and wellbeing.
“I have struggled with mental health from a pretty young age so I know how important it is, especially within our youth,” Bynum said.
As the current board president of Ignite the Voice (ITV), she wanted to make sure that education and mental health resources were as accessible to members as the group's focus on arts programming. ITV has worked to make the arts more open young people in New Haven over the last six years.
After the success of ITV’s previous college prep and job research projects, Bynum was ready for more projects to take form. She felt like mental health was the next natural topic to tackle.
When the historic global pandemic shut down the world last spring, that interest became a sudden need. Young people like Bynum were forced to stay home, and endure hours of virtual schooling and isolation.
That sense of urgency led to the creation of a four-part series to educate youth from various backgrounds on mental health, marginalizations, stigmas and the various kinds of mental health disorders. Bynum named it "Our Mental Health Matters."
Jessica Gilliam, ITV’s executive director and co-founder, was immediately on board with the idea.
“After the pandemic happened, I started having weekly check-ins over zoom with ITV members,” Gilliam said. “This was also around the time of George Floyd’s death, so we weren’t only dealing with a lot of change related to mental health, but also a lot of tension and racial unrest.”
The group at Riverside Academy earlier this year. Contributed Photo.
Providing distinct support and education on these matters is what ITV is working towards.
“One term I’d never heard before until it was mentioned in our sessions was social-emotional learning,” Gilliam said."This is something that is supposed to be touched upon in schools but from what participants have told me, it hasn’t."
“It’s really cool that this is something we can provide for teenagers that don’t receive it otherwise,” she added.
One of the main goals of the series was to create a "safe space" to discuss issues that ranged from depression and anxiety to racism that students experienced in and out of the classroom. ITV members led the conversations and featured clinical therapists including Rebecca Cohen, a doctor of clinical psychology who also does equine assisted therapy.
To 17-year-old Tru Adamick, ITV provided just that. As a rising high school senior, the series was the outlet she needed to discuss important matters.
“Mental health is important, especially for young people,” Adamick said. “Not everyone has an outlet, so ITV is providing something real and necessary.”
ITV’s board wants to bring the topics discussed in the series to more people. In July, they were invited to talk to their peers in a summer program at Riverside Academy. Several of the social workers present asked Bynum to share the presentation she created for teachers about social emotional learning.
“I’m happy to speak with people in general,” Bynum said. “The people that attended our sessions came because they cared and wanted to help spread the message [Our Mental Health Matters] stands for. We’re working on a lot of new, exciting things that will only affirm what we are all about.”
Moving forward, ITV’s board is making plans to provide mental health support to adults.
“This past installment in [the series] was especially just for our youth to ensure that it stayed a safe space,” Gilliam said. “Now we are looking to make a series for the dozens of adults that were interested the first time around.”
Jayla Anderson is a graduate of the Youth Arts Journalism Initiative. She is a rising sophomore at Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School, where she is studying dance.