ALT Colorado organizations serving youth rethink their role in addressing mental health crisis “We can’t just wait for people to come to the hospitals,” U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says Meg WingerterApril 25, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. Lakewood High School student Ciara Leal, ... Lakewood High School student Ciara Leal, right, hugs Tara Noyes after having a discussion about teen suicide on behalf of the Robbie’s Hope Foundation on the 16th St. Mall in Denver on Jan. 25, 2020. Robbie Eckert, a student at Lakewood High School, took his own life in 2018. Robbie’s parents Jason and Kari Eckert started Robbie’s Hope Foundation to raise awareness and push for the need for increased mental health resources in local communities. (Photo by Andy Cross/The Denver Post) School was never a place where Zuzu Niyongabile felt like she could talk about her mental health, even as she and her classmates

ALT Project VOYCE wasn’t created to help young people with their mental health — it focuses on training youth of color in activism — but organizers realized there was an unmet need when their participants were burning out from the work and the toll of trauma they were carrying from individual hardships and living with racism, executive director Vanessa Roberts said. Now, the nonprofit’s leaders encourage boundaries and rest, and start and end each meeting with a ritual so the participants feel that it’s safe to be vulnerable, she said. Project VOYCE is just one of the organizations serving young people that are having to rethink their roles in the face of a youth mental health crisis in Colorado that predates 2020, but worsened during the pandemic. And in many cases, teens themselves are stepping up, looking for ways to support their peers.