By Brent Learned — Denver, Colorado … The RMC Youth Department hosted their first Greater Summit: Conversations event for our youth and young adults on May 1. This virtual event featured mental health expert, Dr. Tiffany Llewellyn from Johns Hopkins University, who gave a TED talk-style presentation followed by a live Q and A session on the topic of “Mental Health in Isolation.”
The statistics on mental health challenges facing young people today are staggering, she said. One in five young adults suffers from anxiety and more than 50 percent will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in their lifetime according to cdc.gov and childtrends.org. The percentage of young Americans experiencing mental health disorders has risen significantly over the past decade, with no corresponding increase in older adults, according to research published by the American Psychological Association.
In her presentation, Dr. Llewellyn addressed the impact of social isolation on all of us. She said, “What we are able to manage, what we have control over, is what’s happening with us in this moment of isolation. I what you to think about our conversation today as how can I manage myself in this moment even if I cannot control and manage the moment.”
She continued that “what happens when we experience anxiety or stress is that we worry because there is a threat to our mental and physical safety. There is something that is heightening our worry and heightening our fears and heightening that stress for us because we experience it as a threat again ourselves and against or safety in every single way. what is happening in the brain is that the brain sends signals and our cortisol levels go up and our executive functioning goes down so that we experience a heightened sense of worry, but we experience inability and a cloudiness of how to deal with that worry.”
Addressing the Zoom participants, she stated, “I want to leave you with today is how to be able to bring up your executive functioning, clear your minds, and manage what’s happening with yourself in the moment of COVID-19. What is happening when we are in that heightened worry, when our executive functioning is lowered, when there is a threat to our physical safety is we experience what we call fight, freight, or freeze. When we fight there is that irritability, that tension, our jaws tighten we really want to be able to fight that threat. Or for others there might be the flight. We might feel trapped we want to get away from this. We may me thinking, how do I escape this thing? There might be restlessness or feeling fidgety. Or for others there might be what we call the freeze. we freeze up. We are num or there is a stiffness. We really don’t know how to move. Knowing how you respond to stress is going to be really important to how I am able to guide this conversation and what sort of coping mechanisms may be most helpful for you. Remember, there is no one size fits all.”
A live Q and A session followed her presentation, and attendees asked Dr. Llewellyn questions about how to work through personal mental health challenges, how to recognize and help friends and family members work through mental health challenges, and when to seek professional help.
Among the questions posed by the attendees were, “How can we pinpoint specific stress/anxiety triggers inside ourselves?” “What are healthy ways to address and deal with anticipatory grief?” “How does the Sabbath fit into the mental health conversation?” Also asked was the question, “What mental health resources such as apps, book, podcast, etc., have you, Dr. Llewellyn, found most helpful and would recommend to others during this difficult time of social isolation?”
The last part of the event was split into separate youth and youth adult Zoom “social spaces,” where 50 attendees had the opportunity to hang out together and engage in some fun small-group interaction.
During the social space small-group conversations, there was a palpable sense of appreciation for the information and inspiration Dr. Llewellyn shared during the event and hope that we will get through this pandemic together as a community and come out the other side stronger because of it.
A BIG shout out to the youth pastors and youth leaders from the Mile High MVMNT for hosting the zoom social space for the youth who attended the event.
—Brent Learned is RMC associate director; illustration supplied.
