Even before the COVID-19 pandemic made mental health problems worse for people of all ages, young people already struggled with a lack of support and treatment for issues like depression, anxiety, and ADHD. 

Like many states, Michigan doesn’t have enough health care providers, and youth mental health professionals are in high demand. 

Some local groups step in to support kids when they aren’t getting the help they need or experience long wait times for services.

To learn more about how one community-based organization tackles these challenges, Public Good News spoke with Avion Williams, Youth Coordinator at Community Family Life Center.

Here’s what she said.

[Editor’s note: The contents of this interview have been edited for length and clarity.]

Public Good News: Can you tell us more about your organization and where you’re located?

A.W.: Community Family Life Center is a community outreach center. We offer a multitude of after-school programs and services to Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor and even the Belleville community. 

Ypsilanti is a small community. It was originally a farmer’s town. You will still see a lot of older families here. 

A lot of our restaurants are like mom-and-pop shops. We have our downtown area, which is now being modernized a little bit, but again, a lot of shops are family-owned businesses that have been around for decades. 

We have a lot of colleges. We have Eastern Michigan, which is the college I actually attend, and that’s in Ypsilanti. But we also have colleges right next door that are 10 minutes away, like University of Michigan and Concordia. 

So it’s a college town, very family-oriented, but also a very small town with not too many resources.

PGN: Can you share some of your experiences as a youth coordinator trying to help young people access your organization’s services and programs?

A.W.: So we offer a ton of different programs, but our main focus is for kids to have something to do. There’s definitely a lot of young people in Ypsilanti. 

I’m 25, and when I was in high school, a lot of people in my grade were having children. And they weren’t just having one baby, they were having multiple babies. You know, maybe one in tenth grade, another when we graduated our senior year, another right after. So a lot of people my age have a lot of children. And now I work with a lot of their children. 

Many of those children come to after-school programs, and they’re in need of not just school things like math and reading, but they’re in need of, you know, love and care. Maybe mom can’t do everything because she has to work two or three jobs, or she doesn’t have the best financial help, and so she doesn’t know what to do. 

And these young children get stuck with teachers that may not necessarily know how to give the best support, because maybe they’re stressed. 

We have after-school programs and community centers like ours, where we get all of that. 

Not only do we have to deal with mental health, we have to deal with these babies being hungry. We have to teach what mental health is. 

PGN: What about therapy? How does that fit into the picture?

A.W.: Sometimes in society, people just throw therapy out there, like, ‘Go to therapy, go to therapy, go to therapy,’ but they don’t talk about the process of what it’s like getting a therapist. 

I love the idea of therapy. Don’t get me wrong. Having somebody to talk to is very real. Having the right person to talk to is very real, right? 

But I think sometimes we don’t talk about how everybody is not able to get therapy. 

And a lot of times when people are ready for therapy, it’s after everything has happened. 

You know, ‘Mom is gone, dad is gone. I’m doing terribly in school now. I’m acting out. Now I’m lashing out. I’m super hungry. I don’t have money for this. I don’t have money for that. I don’t know what to do about this…’ and then it’s like, ‘okay, I think I need therapy.’ 

Instead of us approaching it as, ‘Hey, this person’s mom is a young mom, maybe we should see if we can get therapy for both of them.’ Or when that child is being born, or when we see this young mom at the hospital and we see that she’s pregnant. Let’s offer some help before things start to hit the fan, right? 

And maybe this mom doesn’t even have the proper health care to receive therapy, or let alone, doesn’t have the money to pay for it. 

PGN: How does your organization respond to this need?

A.W.: We have a lot of ways to access our therapists. We started maybe two years ago, and at first a lot of people weren’t going. And now there’s so many people going that yes, we have this wait list.

So we also all do daily check-ins with our kids. We really do get to know our kids and their families and have consistent conversations with parents. 

I always tell my kids this is a safe space to talk. I’m open to hear anything my students have to say.

This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.