It Takes a Village to Tackle the Teen Mental Health Crisis
In Gonzales, California, Young People Are Turning to One Another—With the Support of Their Community—to Address a National Problem
How will California ever solve the mental health crisis among its young people?
Perhaps by empowering young people to do the job themselves.
That, at least, is what happening in the state’s most innovative small town, Gonzales (pop. 8600), in the Salinas Valley.
Starting in early 2020, middle school and high school students—members of the Gonzales Youth Council, a parallel city council for the young—have taken the lead in documenting the damage the pandemic was doing to their peers. But they didn’t stop there. Using their data, they created a new mental health …
