Teen Mental Health, Substance Use Support Group Marks 10 Years; Cape Tech Student Speaker Details Experience In Program

PLEASANT LAKE – With more than 40 percent of Massachusetts teens reporting feelings of persistent sadness or hopelessness, an organization that provides services to Cape youth and young adults experiencing mental health or substance use challenges is looking to grow as it marks its 10th year.

Local nonprofit Behavioral Health Innovators, which operates two programs aimed at supporting at-risk students, is seeking to centralize some of its programming and establish a headquarters under one roof while also increasing the organization’s presence in the schools it serves. 

Executive director Stephanie Gilrein shared those future goals at Behavioral Health Innovators’ annual board meeting, held at Cape Cod Regional Technical High School on May 28. 

The nonprofit’s vision is pressing. Not only, according to Gilrein, do 42 percent of teenagers in the state report persistently feeling sad or hopeless, but suicide is the second-leading cause of death for people ages 15 to 19 — and mental health-related emergency room visits have increased 30 percent since 2020.

Behavioral Health Innovators’ flagship offerings are Positive Alternatives For Student Support (called PASS) and Cape Teens Rising. Founded in 2022, PASS acts as an alternative to school suspension (or as a support for students struggling with mental health or substance use), a short-term program held during school hours that participants can attend for up to 10 days. PASS is offered for high schoolers at the Centerville Recreation Building and for middle schoolers at YMCA Cape Cod in West Barnstable.

“Over the years I witnessed firsthand the transformation that can happen when students are given space to heal, to reflect on some of the choices that they've made, but more importantly, rebuild the confidence within themselves,” Gilrein said.

The hope is to find a central location that would bring both PASS offerings under one roof in the mid-Cape area and also serve as headquarters for the organization. 

PASS has served 533 students, 62 percent of whom came in with a significant substance use concern and 90 percent with a mental health concern, according to Gilrein. Fifty-eight percent had both.

“I've watched students walk out of that program standing taller, straighter and more confident in who they are,” Gilrein said. “Many of them left feeling empowered, reassured and believing again that they're capable of returning to school, connecting with their friends, their teachers, their family members, and moving forward with strength and purpose, and that's the transformation that keeps me here, and that continues to inspire me every day.”

PASS serves 17 schools across the Cape, as well as Nantucket and Wareham. The trend, according to Gilrein, has been more self-referrals — youth asking to come to the program.

“You get academic support, you have skill-building workshops, you have a clinician, a therapist on board to talk to you, and kids are wanting that, which is great,” Gilrein said. “And part of our mission at BHI is to break that stigma of asking for and receiving help, so we're making strides in that.”

Cape Teens Rising, founded in 2018, is a longer-term service designed for Cape Cod teens struggling with substance use. It is a six-month, twice-a-week treatment and recovery program that served 22 participants in the past year (and 220 total, plus at least one parent or guardian each, since 2018).

For Cape Teens Rising, 83 percent of participants from within the last year achieved their recovery goals, and 100 percent of them would recommend the program to a friend, according to Gilrein. The program meets in two locations — Dennis and Falmouth — right after school hours.

“I never really thought I would be here, especially at the beginning of PASS,” Smith said. “As you heard, I didn't really look at it so positively, but over time it did turn into a big turning point in my career.”

Smith will be attending New England College to study business administration and play football. He said that it’s hard to fit in for students right now, that they’re looking and trying to be somebody — that everybody needs to be brought together more often.

One of the first steps, Smith said, to making students better is “to make them comfortable in the places where they're at.”

“I'm happy to say that with whatever we decide to go with moving forward, I will be a part of it,” he said.