Teens deliver powerful messages
When I first wrote this column in 2005, I ran a feature where I shared wonderful teen activities. It was a vehicle for me to show our community a side of teens they may be missing. It’s been a while since I did so, but this week I feel our current teens have earned the affirmation.
This Thursday, April 16, is our 30th Adolescent Advisory Board Youth Conference. The 75 teen board members were trained in Teen Mental Health First Aid by our professional staff and will be teaching other teens in Washington & Jefferson College’s Rossin Ballroom from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Through a technique I call Speed Learning, over 130 teens will interact on topics related to mental health. I’m very proud of these young people, our staff, and each school’s advisers.
I started the Adolescent Advisory Board in 1999. My goals were to provide teens with a voice and to give them a chance to critique and suggest curricula. Every encounter with a young person is a cross-cultural experience, just like traveling to another country. I trained my first peer educators in 1995; I quickly discovered how effective teens teaching teens could be. I like to say that a message given by an adult is a whisper and the same message given to a teen by an older teen is a shout.
Over the years, the Adolescent Advisory Board took on a wide range of topics – none as life-affirming as this year. In 2024, in response to county teen suicides, I started the Outreach’s ninth program – the Road to Mental Health Education. With a generous grant from the Staunton Farms Foundation, we embarked on two evidence-based programs: SOS (Signs of Suicide) Suicide Prevention and Teen Mental Health First Aid. SOS is being taught in county schools. Interested districts should contact me or call our office at 724-222-2311. Our SOS educators team with counselors from Washington County Mental Health to provide education at its finest.
Four of our professional staff – Amy Podgurski Gough, Heather Crowe, Emily Kolence and Landan Weakland – were certified in Teen Mental Health First Aid. Our daughter Amy took over the Adolescent Advisory Board in 2021; under her leadership our certified trainers took on a formidable task – they trained 75 teens over four months, following the valid and reliable guidelines of the program. The teens on the board spent the next three months preparing the topics they will teach on Thursday. Teens from 10 Washington County School Districts – Avella, Bentworth, Burgettstown, California, Canon-McMillan, Charleroi, Chartiers-Houston, Ringgold, Trinity and Washington – will participate in 13 learning stations about mental health. Our certified board members are our Ambassadors for Mental Health.
The teens designed a conference T-shirt that reads Just Breathe; Ambassador for Mental Health: Teen Outreach Adolescent Advisory Board 2026.
Preparing teens for this important role while maintaining fidelity of an evidence-based program is a huge task. I am incredibly proud of the teens and of our staff. In the first weeks alone after these teens were certified, we received seven referrals from their peers; one resulted in an in-patient stay.
The conference is supported by a generous grant from Range Resources.
Have a question? Send it to Dr. Mary Jo Podgurski’s email podmj@healthyteens.com.