When Lauren Farina walks into an Oak Park or River Forest middle school or high school, something is tragically amiss. She is there to assess a local teenager and, if needed, recommend psychiatric hospitalization.
Her job isn’t easy, especially since the national suicide rate for 10- to 24-year-olds has increased by 8 percent-the largest single-year increase in 15 years, she says. Work has been busy for her and Pillars’ Crisis Intervention Services at the schools. There is a growing number of teenagers dealing with severe societal issues at earlier ages, which is affecting how they function and interact with others.
This day she is at Oak Park and River Forest High School to meet with a freshman boy who had been violent at home with his guardian and disruptive at school. As a candidate for Pillars’ Screening, Assessment and Support Services. Farina recommended he participate in psychiatric hospitalization and out-patient treatment for 90 days.
Now, after completing the program, the incoming sophomore continues to work with Farina on an out-patient basis, and he is progressing, she says. He can now manage his emotions and anger at home and at school, as well as consider his consequences before acting.
In crisis mode
Farina, a child and adolescent therapist with Pillars, says teenagers today deal with so many stressors that could ignite behavioral outbursts, including depression, that it is unsettling for her.
“It is difficult to tease out which children are saying this out of frustration and anger and hopelessness, and who will act,” she says. “But if they have named a plan to hurt themselves, then they are automatically hospitalized because we don’t want to take that risk.”
Every year Pillars serves more than 10,000 individuals and families across 38 communities with its various social-service programs and Crisis Intervention Services. This includes SASS, which delivers home and community-based mental health services to uninsured adolescents and their families who are unable to pay without financial assistance, Farina says.
The services, she continues, are always catalyzed when a guardian or school counselor who calls the agency’s crisis hotline. However, if a child is exhibiting behavior issues but no one’s personal safety is at risk, SASS isn’t initiated, and a referral to another agency will be made.
Through her work at middle schools, including Percy Julian and Gwendolyn Brooks, high schools and other public schools in communities such as River Forest, Garfield Park and Austin (as well as in Berwyn and Cicero), Farina says she hopes her intensive intervention program will continue to produce positive results, even though she understands that many times the odds are against her.
“I want these kids and their families to know that there are people in mental health services who are working really hard to help them … to hold out hope,” Farina says. “We wouldn’t be doing this if there wasn’t an opportunity for change, or the idea that we can really make a difference in a teenager’s life.”
-Deb Quantock McCarey