The Y is addressing unmet mental health needs through evidenced-based mentoring practices, and community mental health modalities.

We believe wellness is essential and achieved through healthy spirit, mind and body. Our holistic approach leads us to deliver critical mental health resources across San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin, to youth through afterschool programs and families in through our comprehensive resource centers. 

Some of the programmatic examples of how the Y is delivering Mental Health Services include the individual and group counseling sessions via our Early Periodic Screening and Diagnostic Testing (EPSDT) program in schools, family counseling sessions in our Family Resource Centers, trauma recovery mental health services in community and via home visit, domestic violence counseling, and a host of mental health services provided by the San Mateo Youth Services Bureaus. 

We are committed to supporting and nurturing families in developing connected, productive, and healthy youth who can navigate the future and contribute to the community, by delivering therapeutic approaches which are equally rooted in evidenced-based mentoring practices and mental health modalities.

School to Prison Pipeline

More and more youth and their parents/caregivers living in communities of poverty are presenting with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in schools, in afterschool programs, and among the ranks of the incarcerated. Youth are living without healthy adult role models and are becoming all too callused to the tragedies of loss and violence as a regular part of life and all too often fall victim to perpetuating multi-generational cycles of poverty and economic struggle. Add all of this up and we see a population of youth with massive unmet mental health needs, youth with unexpressed grief and anger over loss and abandonment, and youth who are all too ready to lash out at a system stacked against them from birth; thus, contributing to the unfortunate “school to prison pipeline.” 

Results Based Practices

Our synergy of mental health disciplines has resulted in:

  • positive outcomes for youth who have demonstrated improvements in personal developments (e.g., reducing levels of depression, increasing levels of self-worth, etc.)
  • academic performance (e.g., higher grades, better classroom preparedness/behavior, etc.)
  • and social relationships (e.g., being seen as responsible by adults, high personal expectations, etc.).

 

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