MOULTRIE — Julio Ginel, a mental health professional with Georgia Pines and a co-responder with the Moultrie Police Department, brought attention to the topic of youth mental health at the Annual Archway Leadership Summit in late April.

“When I talk about this topic, I want you to think about yourself when you were a teen. So, think about when you were a teen as I talk about this topic. It’s very important and I’ll tell you at the end why I asked you to do that,” he said.

He said that teen mental health was impacted, in general terms, by societal issues, familial issues and individual development. He added that it was very simple but to make it more simple, the outside world, the home and the inside world.

Things that happen outside, he said, impact the teen and some examples are political topics, popular beliefs and influences, crime and access to services, quality of education, racism, social economic status and social media.

“Now, when we come inside the home, familial issues like exposure to trauma. If a parent has suffered a trauma, the child will suffer as well. They are not immune,” Ginel said.

He went on to include poverty, generational issues, financial insecurities, limited or non-existent services, individually experiencing trauma, issues with self-view, learning deficiency, physical concerns, nutrition and outlets for communication.

“These influences also impact us as adults. However, we adults, we have the language to communicate how we feel,” Ginel said and added that a teen won’t tell when they’re upset but their face doesn’t lie. “You can read it. You can gauge it.”

He told the audience that teens in rural areas experience a higher percentage of depression and anxiety than in the metro areas; higher use of social media including sites with questionable content; availability of substances like drugs and alcohol and access to firearms; limited or deficient health information about sexuality; limited services and activities; peer pressure; familial disengagement; limited models of positive and healthy behavior; and stigma surrounding mental health and services.

“So, are you still in that head space as a teen?” he asked and added that their experiences probably weren’t much different from what the kids are experiencing now and that the things that impacted them still impact teens today.

Ginel gave some statistics from the Rural Teen Reports to CDC from 2022, starting with the number of teens that the 2022 Census reported lived in Colquitt County, which was 14,619 residents under the age of 18.

He said that out of that number, 2,441 kids have identified having depression at least once or continuously and 2,705 have identified having anxiety.

Ginel and Lt. Tonero Bender make up the Moultrie Police Department’s co-responder unit.

In a later interview, the two of them gave some more insight into what they were seeing in regard to calls involving youth.

“As a co-responder unit, we don’t get that many and that’s attributable to the systems that are in place. The officers, the Apex program which Georgia Pines has a couple in the school system. Those systems tend to deal with, what I would say, the brunt of the issues,” Ginel said.

The teens and the children they deal with are the ones who are out of school or the situation is very intense and the people who are involved are unsure as to how to address it, he said.

“So we don’t receive that many calls for teens but the ones that we get, the levels tend to be very intense,” he said.

When the co-responder team goes out to a call where a teen is involved, said Ginel, most of the time they are able to talk to the teen and understand what’s going on.

R.J. Hurn, CEO of Georgia Pines, weighing-in via a video call, said, “Most of the time, by the time we’re seeing them, they’re looking for somebody to talk to. They haven’t had anybody to talk to and sometimes it’s much easier to talk to a stranger about your personal problems than to a family member or friend.”

Ginel said that people seem to focus on trends. They focus on teen pregnancy, they focus on vaping but they don’t focus on the cause.

“What brings the child to that? Everything becomes glamorized and we lose sight of what the real issues are,” he said.

Hurn said that, according to the Apex coordinator, the big four that they are seeing in Colquitt County youth are anxiety, depression, substance use and suicide — and that’s what the therapists are dealing with.

Ginel said that there’s usually a reason that leads a youth toward drugs or suicide and that’s why depression and anxiety are things that should really be paid attention to.

“A parent may have some information but not enough to make an educated decision, which breeds frustration,” Ginel said.

“I’ve noticed in almost all of our interactions, there’s some level of misunderstanding or ignorance as to what’s happening. Also a lack of awareness of resources that are available,” he said.

Hurn said, of the resources that were available, that the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities has text lines for teens only that go straight up to their crisis center so that they can talk to a therapist if they want to.

“The other thing is that we do have our Apex program that’s in some of the schools in Colquitt County,” he added.

The Georgia Apex Program, which is funded by the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, through collaboration with community mental health providers and schools, provides school-based mental health services for school-aged youth, pre-kindergarten to 12th grade.

Hurn said Georgia Pines provides the Apex services, of school-based mental health, for Colquitt County and sometimes those therapists will be contacted so that they can have a conversation with the youth who is in crisis.

“I say, in my experience as a co-responder and as a clinician, there are two things that you can do that is the best thing you can do,” Ginel told the audience at the Archway Leadership Summit.

He said one of the things was to “listen” and he shared how, when he was young, his father always told him to “suck it up.” He said, with his daughter, he won’t do the same thing that his father did to him but, instead, he listens to her.

“And what I found is that, when I listened, I learned, which is the second thing. You want to learn as much as possible not only about your kid, but about yourself. About mental health. Learn as much as you can,” he said. “It may not jive with what you believe, just learn.”

He said that there are many times that he goes out and talks to parents and kids and the parent says that the kid is acting-out and, when he talks to the kid, they say that their parents don’t listen to them.

“It sounds simple enough but it’s very difficult. It is. But I guarantee you, if you listen and you open your mind just a little bit and learn even the things that you don’t like and you don’t agree with and you really don’t care about, you’d be surprised how much of an impact it can have on your teen,” Ginel said.