Editor’s note: If you or someone you know may be considering suicide or is in crisis, call or text 988 to reach the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.

Young adult suicide rates are rising in the U.S. For Americans aged 18 to 27, the rate increased by nearly 20% in the past decade. What’s behind the rise, and what are states doing about it?

Guests

Michelle Munson, professor at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University. Her research focuses on how adolescents and young adults receive mental health services. She is also the co-director of the Youth and Young Adult Mental Health Group at NYU.

Rachel Holloman, senior director of federal grants and suicide prevention at the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Office. She’s also a licensed counselor.

Also Featured

Reggie Winston, barber and owner of The Bar Ber Shop in Raleigh, N.C.

Tricia Baker, co-founder of Attitudes in Reverse (AIR), a non-profit focused on teen and adolescent mental health.

The version of our broadcast available at the top of this page and via podcast apps is a condensed version of the full show. You can listen to the full, unedited broadcast here:

Transcript

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI:  Kahlil Rossi lives in Raleigh, North Carolina. He’s 24 years old. And when he needs a haircut – he goes to The Bar Ber Shop on New Bern Ave. And there, he sits down in Reggie Winston’s chair.

But Reggie isn’t just any barber.

REGGIE: (BUZZING) In your 24 years of life, man. Have you ever encountered some, what you feel might have been some mental health challenges?

KAHLIL: Um, yeah, I’d say especially during, um, when I was in school, mainly.

REGGIE: How did you cope then, man? What, what things did you have to help you through those challenges?

KAHLIL: Um, mainly other people talking to, to friends. Yeah, talking to friends and my parents friends or my grandparents. My, my grandmother. Um, she kept me prayed up and stuff like that. (BUZZING)

CHAKRABARTI: As Reggie asks Kahlil about his mental health – Kahlil doesn’t seem uncomfortable. He doesn’t pause before answering. In fact – Kahlil seems at ease, even sort of smiling as he opens up.

(BUZZING) Reggie: You like the responses you got from most of your people? Yeah. Nice.

Kahlil: It helped me a lot.

Reggie: That could be a challenge sometimes, man. Right. So have you ever been in a situation you didn’t know what to say to somebody? Kahlil: Oh yeah. I still go through stuff like that.

Reggie: Yeah, definitely, bro. That’s my story, bro. People would open up to me. Mm. And I didn’t know how to respond, so I just changed the subject. Yeah. And I’m like, yo, this is bad. This is not the right way.

Kahlil: A lot of times I just say, um, well, not as much now, but I just say what I think I want people to hear. Yeah. Or what the first thing that come to my mind.

Reggie: Oh, you think they should hear?

Kahlil: Mm-hmm. Yeah. (BUZZING)

CHAKRABARTI: Reggie isn’t just listening as he trims Kahlil’s hair. He’s also risking being vulnerable. Reggie – is sharing, a lot actually:

Reggie: That was step one in correcting myself, right? Yeah. Trying to say what I feel or what I think they should do, or then I felt like they’re wanting the right thing, man. Mm-hmm. So I got trained in mental health first aid and that’s another training called Calm. It’s counseling on access to legal means.

And those things gave me the vocabulary and the wisdom on how to respond to people in crisis, right? And once I did that, I was like, nah, I need to get more barbers trained in this. Because we deal with people every day, man, who might be going through something. Yeah. And I think it’s good for us to know how to cut hair, but it’s even better to know how to respond in a crisis. (BUZZING)

CHAKRABARTI: You’ve heard it or even experienced this fact. The number of young Americans who report profound struggles with their mental health is alarmingly high. The problem was made worse and more public with the COVID pandemic lockdowns.

In fact, over the past 10 years, the suicide rate for Americans aged 18 to 27 has gone up 20% nationally. In North Carolina, rates for this age group were up 41%, according to the CDC. The suffering is particularly acute among Black youth. This past July, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services reported that one in six Black high schoolers and more than one in three Black middle schoolers have experienced serious thoughts of suicide.

Those dire figures were released in the states new Black youth suicide prevention plan. It’s something that barber Reggie Winston and Khalil Rossi talked about.

 (BUZZING) REGGIE: I don’t know if you know it, man, since COVID, Black youth suicide rates have been skyrocketing. Especially in your age group, the 18 to 27, and skyrocketed man, and I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on with that man.

KAHLIL: Yeah, I could definitely, well, I can’t relate, but I could see how some people go through the things that they go through, especially if they don’t have anywhere to express it. Yeah.

REGGIE: Do you think some of ’em feel hopeless too? Feeling the hopelessness?

KAHLIL: Yeah. Especially if they don’t have faith and a lot of people don’t know how to have faith or wasn’t trained on having faith. Yeah. (BUZZING)

CHAKRABARTI: Barber shops have always been places of fellowship and conversation for Black men. They would be natural places for men who trust each other to risk sharing the hurt and pain of a deep psychological struggle. But Reggie would tell you, even though the trust might be there, the skill required to let a man feel like he can share anything and everything often is not.

Reggie has been cutting hair for 14 years. He wasn’t taught anything about mental health at barber school. There’s a chapter about customer service, he says, but that’s it.

Reggie sought out mental health training on his own – and that happened because of Covid.

WINSTON: The barbershop is a very safe place. It’s a place where, you know, you fight the world and all the other relationships you have all week long, and you finally come to this place where you know you can be taken care of. You know, people are gonna speak to you and appreciate you when you walk through the door. You can let your guard down, you can relax. That stopped for three months.

 You know, all the challenges with the world, you know, people being at home, and possibly some toxic relationships or being at home with a kid for three months or five months, however much they were, it became a real time of not knowing how to manage their mental health. Because their routines had drastically changed. So we started hearing a lot of stories, man, about people having suicidal thoughts or just chronic depression and having different episodes.

CHAKRABARTI: Reggie reached out to his longtime friend Rodney Harris, a counselor and associate professor with the Suicide Prevention Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Harris helped Reggie get trained in mental health counseling.

After that – the two teamed up. And so far, they’ve trained 80 barbers at his shops and shops in the Raliegh area.

WINSTON: And my barbers do a wonderful job of having private conversations with people. There are oftentimes that things are a little bit too challenging to say in a barbershop. So we’ll stop cutting hair and we’ll walk outside and really have a deep conversation that’s one on one, to try to be there for a person.

And one thing I did find in this, this walk with learning about mental health and how to respond, is sometimes everybody don’t need a solution, right? Then some people just need to be heard and just to know that someone care.

Some people just need to be heard and just to know that someone care.

Reggie Winston

CHAKRABARTI: Reggie has taken his model on the road. He also has a mobile shop he takes to housing developments, schools, skate parks. He and his barbers give cuts while also providing a caring ear for men to open up and share.

Reggie says there are major obstacles between Black youth and mental health services. Access isn’t the only problem. He’s found that many young people don’t even know about the national suicide hotline — 988.

WINSTON: I had never even heard of it and I’m like, we have to get this in every barbershop that we can and, and not just on a community board, we need to put it in the bathrooms. We need to put it at the stations; we need to put it on the window out front. Like we really need to get 988 out and let people know this is a free resource.

We really need to get 988 [the Suicide Prevention Hotline] out and let people know this is a free resource.

Reggie Winston

CHAKRABARTI: North Carolina’s Black Youth Suicide Prevention Plan found that 55% of Black young people who take their own lives use firearms to do so. Reggie’s shop is also distributing gun locks – he’s given out 2,500 locks so far.

Reggie knows a barbershop won’t solve the mental health crisis for young adults – but it’s an important and untapped place to get help to people who need it the most.

WINSTON: It’s really a collective. I’m just a piece of the puzzle and I’m a major piece of the puzzle because they come to me to look good. And when typically, when you look in the mirror and you feel like you look good, you start to feel a little better. A lot of people have people come to them and want to be a part of their life because they need something from them. I’m one of the few people who don’t need anything from them. I’m actually here to provide a service for them.

That was Reggie Winston – a barber and owner of The Bar Ber Shop in Raleigh, North Carolina. And by the way, if you or someone you know is in crisis, you can contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline via text, phone, or chat. You can text or call 988 or you can chat online with someone at 988.

It’s available 24/7, 365 days a year nationwide, and it is free. Joining us now is Michelle Munson. She’s a professor at the Silver School of Social Work at New York University, and her research focuses on how adolescents and young adults receive mental health services.

She’s also co-director of the Youth and Young Adult Mental Health Group at NYU. Professor Munson. Welcome to On Point.

MICHELLE MUNSON: Thank you, Meghna. Thank you for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: We have talked several times over the past five years about a rising mental health crisis among young people. But this latest conversation for us was brought about because Stateline, which is part of the nation’s largest nonprofit journalism group that’s focused on states, they recently did this state by state analysis that found that for Gen Z adults right now, in comparison to when millennials were their same age about 10 years ago, Gen Z adults are taking their own lives, or the suicide rate is much, much higher than it was even 10 years ago. Can you talk about that Professor Munson, and just your first reaction to that fact?

MUNSON: Sure. Sadly, I’m not entirely surprised. Gen Z really has had such a different young adulthood than millennials and just a different developmental young adulthood in general. I think of it as a confluence of conditions, some of which you’ve already mentioned. Gen Z is really the first generation raised in the new tech-based world.

In fact, you know the book, the Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt talks all about this, about how this generation is overprotected in the real world and perhaps under protected in the virtual world. And young people and parents actually are really struggling with different kinds of challenges that can come from that.

Things like bullying, isolation, and so then that’s one important matter I think for this discussion, and we talk a lot in our group about the importance of technology hygiene.

In thinking about that with young people, also, as you mentioned, I think so rightly, COVID-19, and its aftereffects have been significant for Gen Z, and I think a lot about how these significant developmental years for them were during a global pandemic and there was a real decrease in normal developmental spaces like clubs and school. And youth groups. And these trends have not actually entirely reversed. And so I think there’s isolation with that too.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: As a rule, I actually don’t love using averages or nationwide numbers. Given the diversity of this country. So let’s break it down a little bit. And again, a tip of the hat to Stateline that did a state by state analysis here of what’s happening with young people.

They have a chart that goes from 2014 to 2024, and in that chart is definitely there is a change in 2020 in the suicide rate amongst young Americans of different ethnicities. It basically all rises, but then after 2020, interestingly, the suicide rate for white young people levels off and starts to slightly drop.

But for Hispanic young people, Black young people, and especially for native young people, the numbers continue. The rates, I should say, continue to rise and that’s why Stateline concluded that the bulk of the overall increase, they say as much as 75% is among Black and Hispanic men and many in Southern and Midwestern states.

What’s your response to that?

MUNSON: Yeah, it’s perplexing, right? And concerning. And I think there are a few things that we can look to, to try to understand those numbers. And I think we need to dig deeper and go into those places and talk to folks. But I think, importantly, during that period, we’ve seen a particular rise in mental health conditions, rise in depression.

Quite significant, right? While we’re simultaneously seeing cuts in programs, cuts in services, in particular to young adults, and you were speaking about men of color. I think some of the programs that will get cut are programs that are culturally tailored, culturally relevant to those particular populations.

And there’s a long history of disparities research related to those groups. I would also want to just mention that over that same decade we’re talking about, there’s been an increase in hate crimes and an increase in race related hate crimes. And the crimes are one thing and then also interacting with that point about technology, Meghna, those crimes are recorded.

And they have been televised and put up on different social media platforms, which if I’m a young man of color and I’m exposed to this and exposed repeatedly. I wonder about that level of suffering and feeling of hopelessness that people who look like me are experiencing these kinds of incidents.

CHAKRABARTI: For people who don’t look like the social images, social media images that we’re seeing, I imagine it’s actually hard for them to understand that impact. Can you talk more about how psychologically it does really hit home and hit hard when you are seeing someone over and over again?

And it’s on and everybody’s seeing it, it’s on the news, et cetera. Also, those same images get warped. And manipulated and exploited as well. Like how is that, how does that sort of manifest itself, in terms of a sense of despair or undiagnosed depression or just a giving up on a belief in the validity or justice in the world?

MUNSON: What an important question. And Meghna, I think it impacts all of us who watch that set of images of, for example, the killing of George Floyd. But I think it’s an additional psychological impact when it is somebody who looks like you, who might be your same age, who you might relate to as far as some of your experiences in life.

And I think you mentioned that it could increase experiences of some of the common symptoms we talk about as it relates to depression, and also, I think about fear. How do I feel as I’m walking around in the world day to day in my community when I have seen somebody who looks like me involved in one of these awful incidences?

CHAKRABARTI: So I always struggle with the ubiquity of this kind of imagery that you’re talking about, this form of media. We’re all swimming in it. And so when you couple that with, as you were talking about, the cutback in what was already a paucity of services for some of these communities, it seems to be like quite a big mountain to climb in order to get help to young people who need it.

MUNSON: Yeah, it’s a mountain to climb and I’m afraid, Meghna, the mountain is going to get bigger. There was a recent report out of the Urban Institute talking about with new legislation, the potential that three out of every 10 young adults might be losing important health care coverage for a variety of reasons.

And so that’s going to increase the challenges of access. But I really agree with your earlier points about and hearing Reggie’s story. It’s not just about access, it’s about having services, but also having Black therapists, having services that are experienced by young adults as culturally relevant and meaningful to their lived experience.

And so I think it’s a combination of those factors and we’re facing a very big mountain. And I think, also, what Reggie said, we have to address this as a collective. Folks like all of us on this call in addition to parents. Young adults themselves, because we’re not going to give up.

We’re going to continue to fight this battle.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. I do want to ask you what you think about the geographic disparity also in the rise of the rate of suicide amongst young people. So we have the racial disparity, and then again, Stateline found that the largest increases in suicide rates for this age group were in Georgia, up 65%, North Carolina and Texas, up 41%, Alabama, up 39%, Ohio, up 37%.

So they conclude from their analysis that really the biggest spikes are in the south and in the Midwest. Can you draw any conclusions from that?

MUNSON: I really would want to dig further into the data, but some of the things that I would speculate are thinking about what is going on for the young adult workforce in those states.

I would be wondering, because it’s so important to recognize that for young adults after they’re leaving structured education. Oftentimes work comes next or for some college, vocational school comes next. But I’d be curious to look into that.

I would also wonder in those particular states, for example, in the South, I wonder about varying amounts of mental health services that young people have access to, and also particularly in Georgia and Alabama, I wonder about whether as racism and these incidences increase, if there’s potentially more activation of what we know is a very significant legacy of medical distrust in families, that is intergenerational, that goes back to Tuskegee.

And I wonder about how families in some of those communities may feel more fear around accessing services as well.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah, I’m using a lot of numbers this hour and I want to be sure that I’m clear about them. What I just mentioned was the largest increases in the rates. Rate of increase. That was Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, and Ohio.

Now, the states that have the largest absolute rate were Alaska, New Mexico and Montana, and the lowest rates according to Stateline, again, New Jersey, California, New York and Massachusetts. So we’ll parse those numbers a little bit more later, but I do want to once again say that, obviously, we are talking about a sharp rise in the suicide rate for Gen Z Americans.

So if you or someone you know is in crisis and in need of help, you can contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can do that via text, phone or chat, text or call 988 or you can chat online with someone at 988lifeline.org. Available 24/7, 365 days a year nationwide, and it is free. Let me turn now to Rachel Holloman.

She joins us from Atlanta, Georgia. She’s Senior Director of Federal Grants and Suicide Prevention at the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Office. Also, a licensed counselor, Rachel Holloman, welcome to On Point.

RACHEL HOLLOMAN: Thank you, Meghna, for having us.

CHAKRABARTI: Talk about what you think has changed in Georgia that has contributed to this 65% increase, according to Stateline, in the suicide rate for young Georgians.

HOLLOMAN: One thing that I want to make sure that we recognize is that mental health challenges look different across these life stages. This age range of 18 to 27 is incredibly broad. What an 18-year-old college freshman may be facing is very different from what a 26-year-old single parent or construction worker may be experiencing.

And here at DBHDD, our work reflects that, we’re tailoring our prevention and support strategies to meet people where they are in their life journey. And we talk a lot about this increase in what’s affected it. Of course we heard Professor Munson talk about COVID. And I would tell you very similar things happened in Georgia during COVID.

And so we saw that affecting our suicide rate. We also have a mental health workforce shortage in Georgia, outside of Atlanta and some of our more metro areas. Georgia is a very rural state, and so there may be a lack of resources both on the mental health side as well as the medical side at times in those places.

Georgia is a very rural state, and so there may be a lack of resources both on the mental health side, as well as the medical side.

Rachel Holloman

CHAKRABARTI: Rachel, can I just jump in here? Because you made a very important distinction there, and one of our goals for this hour is to, as I said, get away from the averages and the blanket numbers. So there’s also an urban-rural disparity as you’re talking about.

And a lot of people when they think of Georgia, probably only think of Atlanta, if they’re not Georgians. So to your point, can you describe, if you’re a young person who lives outside of the Atlanta metro area. I don’t know if there’s a way to describe it, but like, how hard is it to find mental health services if you’ve even reached the point where you’re motivated enough to look for it?

HOLLOMAN: What I can tell you is, let me set the stage for you a little bit when we talk about a rural area. While I work out of Atlanta, I’m actually from rural South Georgia, and when I talk about rural South Georgia, my nearest neighbor from our family farm is a mile away. It is 18 to 20 miles to the nearest small town.

And that would be to get gas or maybe groceries or go to church. So there’s that, there’s lack of resources in regard, there’s not a transportation system. There’s not a public transportation system. So being able to access some of the services that you need, whether they’re medical or mental health, definitely can be a challenge.

There’s poor cell service. At times, depending on what place you’re in, there may or may not be broadband internet or access to that. And we’re looking at several challenges that maybe people in a more metro area might not face. Employment opportunities may not be there or may be minimal in regards to that.

And there’s definitely some challenges. Now, I will say since the rollout of 988 in Georgia, what we have found is our rural areas are utilizing 988 more. So that’s good. At least they know that they have 988 as a resource and they are reaching out to utilize that resource as a way to help them get connected to services where they may not have known how to previously or had some type of lifeline.

Our rural areas are utilizing 988 more.

Rachel Holloman

To reach out, to connect them to services in their local area.

CHAKRABARTI: So let’s talk a little bit more about how Georgia has recognized where the areas of particular need are. And then is trying to do something about it. Because as you said a little bit earlier, 18 to 27 is quite a broad range in terms of developmental life stage. For a lot of these young people, college isn’t the right path for them, so they may go directly into the workforce.

Have you seen, has Georgia seen a difference in industry areas, in terms of young working Americans who need help? Yeah. So as a matter of fact, Georgia has seen that our workers, like our restaurant workers and our construction workers, which also tend to be younger adults in this age group, have actually been at a higher risk of suicide.

The rates among those have been up, our Georgia Department of Public Health data shows that from 2017 to 2021, we had 224 suicides among food preparation and serving occupations. And so that’s a group that we’ve definitely looked at and done a lot of work in preventing prevention and programming to make sure that we’re reaching this group, because occupation can shape mental health risk as much as age.

Occupation can shape mental health risk as much as age.

Rachel Holloman

And so we wanna make sure that they have access to trusted practical support. Another group that we’ve reached out to and done a lot of targeted work to is our agricultural workers. We had within the past year, our data shows us that from the Georgia Rural Health Innovation Center and Georgia Foundation for Agriculture, that out of 1,651 farmers, 96% report moderate to high stress, 29% had suicidal thoughts in the past year, and 9% think about suicide daily. And that’s really important in Georgia because agriculture is our number one business, in Georgia. And so that’s definitely a group that we’ve taken a look at.

CHAKRABARTI: Rachel, hang on here for a second.

Michelle, I just, I heard you respond to some of what Rachel was saying. We’ve just got a minute before our next break, but I wanted to let you back in here.

MUNSON: Yeah, just thinking about the distance that Rachel’s talking about and also these particular professions, right? And the stressors going on for those groups and the rates she’s talking about.

In the 90% of these professions experiencing stress and then such high suicide rates. So really, I was thinking in my mind about the strategies that Georgia is taking to address or target, as she said, target their efforts to those particular professions.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: We’ve been focusing on, thus far on diagnosing the extent of the problem, what groups need it the most, what parts of the country have seen the highest rates of suicides, but now I also want to move to solutions or efforts to get help to young people.

You talked about reaching out to, for example, agriculture workers. Can you tell me more about that? And then other places that Georgia is looking to, in order to get awareness and even assistance to people.

HOLLOMAN: Sure. So we’re actually, when we talk about the specific occupations, we have three main ones that we’ve really been hitting hard in Georgia.

One is agriculture, one is construction, and one is our restaurant workers. And so we’ve done several things. One is awareness and education. Like we’ve equipped industry leaders and supervisors with training and tools to spot warning signs and connect workers to help. We’ve really worked on developing culturally relevant messaging.

So we’re developing content that resonates with construction workers. Their real stories, bilingual materials, stigma reduction campaigns. We’re also doing that specifically for the agricultural community. Because when you talk about suicide and mental health in the agricultural community, we talk about it around the words of things like farm stress.

Because that’s something that the agricultural community identifies to, and it also reduces stigma when trying to get access to them. We’ve done on-the-job access for restaurant workers, for construction sites, for the farming community, where we’ve distributed toolkits with 988 decals, stickers that are either hard hats for construction or we’ve got tractors, we’ve got things that go on tractors for our agricultural community and things that go in bathrooms for our restaurant workers.

And we really work to build collaboration with leaders from outside of mental health within those communities. So people like the Home Builders Association of Georgia, Georgia Farm Bureau, which is one of the biggest insurance companies for the agricultural community, as well as with cooperative extension agencies and stuff like that.

CHAKRABARTI: And so I also imagine that in addition again, thinking of rural Georgia, I’ve read that Georgia’s also partnering with churches, for example, colleges around the state HBCUs. So there’s a really, like a concerted effort here to get the word out in places where it’s hardest to get help. But my last question for you, Rachel, is it’s really important getting awareness of 988, is a really critical first step, but going back to what you said a little bit earlier, in the past 10 years, Georgia’s population has also grown by what, 10%?

And that’s an extra million residents’ mental health supports haven’t necessarily kept up with that growth. And so I’m wondering after 988, which is a call that you make when you’re in crisis, there still seems to be a gap in terms of what does someone do next?

Where do they go for help in Georgia? Like the funding, is it not yet there to provide more mental health care?

HOLLOMAN: And DBHDD is actually investing in workforce development. We’re currently recruiting, retaining and supporting clinicians, psychiatrists. And certified peer specialists across the state.

We’re expanding our telehealth and mobile crisis response for this very reason, to reach communities that don’t have enough local providers. The goal for this is to build a system that grows with Georgia’s population and meets people where they are, whether that’s a rural county, a college campus or a job site.

And one other thing we’re doing is we’re partnering with UGA’s David Ralston Institute for Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, as we work to really increase this workforce development, to make sure that we’re able to do things like build out crisis centers across the state, support these mobile crisis response units.

And do things to make sure that we’re reaching every corner of the 159 counties that the state of Georgia has.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Rachel Holloman at the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities Office. Thank you so much for joining us.

HOLLOMAN: Thank you so much for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: Professor Munson, if you’ll hang on for just a quick minute, I want to quickly drop into another part of the country.

Because again, this geographic disparity is an important part of the picture. I mentioned earlier that the state of New Jersey has one of the lowest rates of young American suicide, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not happening there too. So let’s listen to Tricia Baker, who lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Her son Kenny took his own life on May 19th, 2009.

TRICIA BAKER: I just, I look back and I think if something was a little different. Maybe he might be alive today. I don’t know, but I just, it was a constant battle for us.

CHAKRABARTI: Kenny was 19 years old, and he was just three weeks out from graduating high school.

Kenny was 15 when he was first diagnosed with anxiety and depression. He saw many therapists, was put on various medications and was hospitalized several times. Nothing seemed to work.

BAKER: I do feel blessed that I knew Kenny had an illness, because I am grateful for those three and a half years where we had the opportunity to try to help him.

Too often parents lose a child, and they had no idea that their child was living with a brain illness and they die. And then very often, parents, they blame themselves, and they feel guilt, excessive guilt. And we tried our best. He tried his very best. And unfortunately we ran out of time.

CHAKRABARTI: Although Kenny’s parents knew about his mental health struggles, Kenny did not feel comfortable talking about it at school, so he hid it. If he missed classes, he just told people that he was sick. Tricia says he was embarrassed to talk about it with others, especially his peers. And after Kenny died, his school tried to hide his mental health struggles too.

BAKER: When he died, the school wanted to put a sticker over his picture in the yearbook. You couldn’t say his name in the building. He was a star swimmer. They did not want to do a swim meet in his memory. He died three weeks before graduating high school. They would not say his name at graduation.

They wanted to erase his existence from the school district, even though he had been a student there for 12 years.

CHAKRABARTI: Now, Tricia was already devastated, but this erasure was almost impossible to believe.

BAKER: When we don’t talk about people who have these brain illnesses, who die by suicide, that sends a message to all other students who might be struggling with this, with similar thoughts, that your thoughts, they’re not valid.

You should be ashamed of what you’re thinking and we’re not going to talk about what you’re thinking. So what happens is when we don’t talk about those who’ve passed away from these brain illnesses, it perpetuates stigma and it actually can result in more death.

When we don’t talk about those who’ve passed away from these brain illnesses, it perpetuates stigma and it actually can result in more death.

Tricia Baker

CHAKRABARTI: And not talking about it also perpetuates another stigma, she says, that somehow parents are to blame.

BAKER: People will sometimes say that those who die by suicide die because they don’t feel loved. I will tell you that is not the truth, because Kenny said to me while he was in that last hospitalization, Mom, I wish you didn’t love me so much. It would be easy for me to die.

It’s more than not feeling loved. It’s about a brain illness.

CHAKRABARTI: Tricia decided that silence was not an option anymore. She has refused to keep her son’s death a secret.

BAKER: You should not feel shamed. If you’re a parent of a child who died by suicide, you should not feel shame. You should, I’m so proud of my son.

He was an amazing human being. He had a heart of gold. He was loved by so many people. So many kids after Kenny died, came up and said, I feel this way too. But I didn’t know I could talk about it, and that’s the thing, is that there’s so many children out there who have thoughts of suicide, and they don’t know what to do with those thoughts.

CHAKRABARTI: Soon after Kenny’s death, Tricia and her husband, Kurt, started a nonprofit group called Attitudes In Reverse or AIR. Its mission is to break down those walls of silence and foster open dialogue about mental health and suicide.

BAKER: When we started, we didn’t know what we wanted to do. We just knew that no child should ever be embarrassed or afraid to ask for help for a biological brain illness.

No child should ever be embarrassed or afraid to ask for help for a biological brain illness.

Tricia Baker

CHAKRABARTI: Tricia has hosted talks and workshops in New Jersey and around the country about mental wellness for kids as little as kindergarten, up to college age.

The curriculum is, of course, modified for each age group, but the goal is the same. Starting conversations about good mental health, and Tricia uses every tool she has.

Some of the best are furry and four-legged.

BAKER: And about five years ago, a superintendent, he said, they lost a student to suicide and they had every counselor from the district, from the county, and all the kids were in the media center and not one student was talking. And he said, then the dogs walked in and it was like magic.

The kids would sit on the floor with the dogs. The counselor sat on the floor with the kids, and the grieving process started.

CHAKRABARTI: Tricia believes her work is making a difference, but she wishes there were more programs like hers. I’ve had hundreds of students reach out to me, through Facebook Messenger or through email and saying, Thank you, because of your program I was able to talk to my parents and I’m getting support. I believe it’s through education, by telling kids early that if they’re struggling in any way that you know there’s help for them.

CHAKRABARTI: That’s Tricia Baker. She lost her 19-year-old son, Kenny, to suicide in 2009, and she runs the suicide prevention group, Attitudes in Reverse.

Professor Munson, how much is stigma still a barrier amongst all groups, but actually, especially amongst, as we talked about at the beginning, maybe Black and Hispanic youth.

MUNSON: Yeah, I just first want to honor Tricia and her whole family for the bravery to continue to talk about Kenny’s life and do that in incredibly important education work.

So stigma is an enormous barrier, as you said, for most groups. And also for particularly racial and ethnic minority young adults who are actually some of the young adults that I study at the Youth and young adult mental health group at NYU. And I would say that we’ve known for a long time that stigma in its many forms, by the way, internalized or self-stigma, public stigma, it is a barrier for racial and ethnic minority young adults.

Internalized or self-stigma, public stigma, it is a barrier for racial and ethnic minority young adults.

Michelle Munson

Research has shown they’re less willing to disclose, which again goes back to the importance of the barbershops and the churches. And they often anticipate more negative reactions when considering disclosure. And actually, our group recently published a study in 2024 specifically talking to racial and ethnic minority young adults with mental health conditions.

And in the interviews we had with them, they talked about how stigma and particularly anticipated stigma, that is anticipating the stigma you might encounter if you disclose, impacted their lives in big ways, social, socially through making decisions to isolate from others. Emotionally, making them feel down and also behaviorally, getting in the way of things like going to work.

And so I think it’s a really significant barrier for young adults and something that we have to be thinking a lot about.

CHAKRABARTI: We just have a couple of minutes left, professor, and I have two more questions for you. You mentioned your youth and young adult mental health group. I understand that through that group you found that when some young people actually have sought out services and been able to get them, that they actually have found them to not be very helpful. Why?

MUNSON: This was some research that we did some time ago just talking to young people who said things, for example, I can get the same kind of help that I’ve experienced from professional providers, from alternative options, such as my friends or people I meet on the street, and so we took those important pieces of information and evolved a intervention called Just Do You, which is about addressing those beliefs about treatment and also, by the way, addressing stigma.

And one of the reasons we evolved this program, which by the way also builds on similar to Reggie, we’re using role models that young people trust and find attractive is in order to keep them connected to mental health services, because it’s important.

A lot of these approaches we’ve been talking about can help somebody get to services, but we also have to address the issue that when they show up, we have to make sure the services are relevant to them. Which is I think what you’re getting at.

CHAKRABARTI: So tell me a little bit more about that.

MUNSON: Yeah, so the program is embedded in intake. So when young people who in our work are predominantly racial and ethnic minority young adults show up to a program, in the intake process, they receive these particular modules that have been developed with young adult input that are provided by both a social worker and a role model.

And they use things like music lyrics, visual arts, things that young people have told us are attractive to them that specifically talk about mental health. As you said earlier, it opens up the spaces to have the conversations. In fact, Tricia talked about that as well, and so we’re trying to show them, when they come to the program initially, that this is the kind of space that they will be coming to and it’s actually relevant for the things that they need.

The first draft of this transcript was created by Descript, an AI transcription tool. An On Point producer then thoroughly reviewed, corrected, and reformatted the transcript before publication. The use of this AI tool creates the capacity to provide these transcripts.