As youth violence grips Tacoma, could safe space for kids to talk mental health help?

Two Tacoma youth basketball coaches and business owners noticed a shift among kids last summer: they were struggling mentally.

Darren De Leon and David Stewart, who run Game Time Store that sells athletic apparel, wanted to help their players beyond the court. They started Get Your Mind Right, a mental health youth forum, inviting about 75 6th to 12th graders every other Friday night to talk about what they are going through.

“We wanted to do our part to try to help the community, especially starting with the youth,” De Leon said. “They had a lot of trauma, a lot of things going on. We had a lot of young lives lost, suicide, shootings in our community.”

Stewart said he and De Leon wanted to give kids the opportunity to get together, talk about things they were going through and connect them with mental health professionals.

So far, there have been seven meetings, with more planned into the summer. Topics have included talking about what makes them feel heavy, the pressures of social media, processing grief and the benefits of keeping a journal.

De Leon said they aim to help kids understand what mental health is and how it affects everyday life.

He said he wants to track the forum’s impacts on how kids are feeling, how they are equipped to tackle mental health issues and how they are doing in school. He said he also wants talking about mental health to lead to a decrease in youth homicides and suicides.

So far this year, Tacoma has seen 13 homicides with five of them being people under the age of 18. Three teens were killed in shootings and two young children allegedly died of parental abuse.

Recent studies commissioned by the city of Tacoma draw a link between mental health issues at home and youth violence, which elected and community leaders say is on the rise.

De Leon and Stewart teamed up with Safe Streets, a nonprofit that organizes neighborhood advocacy groups and youth programming, to facilitate the forums. They also brought in two youth mental health professionals, Vanessa Adams and Simone Bullinger, to lead conversations.

“We just tried to have a conversation,” De Leon said. “We didn’t want to talk down to the kids. We wanted to talk with them and get them to open up. I think that’s a big part of how we’re able to really reach a lot of our youth.”

Several kids say the mental health forums are helping.

Kade Price, an eighth grader at Mason Middle School, said the meetings can be uncomfortable sometimes, but it’s made him closer to his teammates hearing that they are feeling the same way he does.

Peter Chase, a community mobilization specialist at Safe Streets, said the youth mental health forum is like peer counseling. Someone is going to say something that someone else is feeling, which gives them confirmation, he said.

Price said he worries about how other people think of him and whether he is seen as weird. The meetings have helped him have another outlook.

“I feel better,” Price said. “I’m closer with my feelings.”

Jahmari Hunter-Seaton, an eighth grader at Pioneer Middle School, said he has used what he learned at the forums and put it into practice.

He has kept a journal to help with his transition to a new school. He said he recently wrote encouraging words in his phone’s note app, like “don’t give up” and “keep going.”

“It’s helpful,” Hunter-Seaton said. “I learned a lot of ways to express myself instead of holding it all in.”

Myrell Benz, an eighth grader at Curtis Junior High, said the forums have helped him with processing when he gets a bad test grade, he is in trouble with his teacher or he misses a shot in basketball. He learned to take deep breaths and walk 15 steps forward and back.

DeLeon said he wants to show the kids that they care and equip them with action steps to help them get through difficult times.

“How do we deal with those situations that are tough?” De Leon said. “The only way to deal with it is to be really real and empathetic with that person and understanding, like, I may not know the answers but to show them that we care and also provide the resources, things that they can do.”

Stewart said their goal is to reach as many kids as they can.

“The youth are our future,” he said. “The faster we can catch their mental (health) and change the narrative of what’s going on, that only makes the future of our community so much better.”

Adams, the program coordinator for Kids’ Mental Health Pierce County, said youth witnessing or experiencing violence becomes a normal way of living, which results in a heightened state and impacts their overall ability to cope with day-to-day things, like going to school and doing well.

Adams said it’s important to listen, validate kids’ experiences and not minimize them, which can create barriers for kids to be able to connect.

De Leon and Stewart want the mental health forum to be a fun activity for kids to go to on a Friday night. The meetings start with a free dinner and end with a raffle of new shoes, clothing and movie-theater gift cards. Game Time is hosting an Impact Night on May 5 at 6-10 p.m. at Stewart Middle School, 5010 S. Pacific Ave. The free event will have art, music, a three-on-three tournament and prizes.

“When we have kids that come see us on Friday nights, they could be somewhere else, right?” De Leon said. “We’re glad they’re there. And that’s a call to action that as community leaders and our government, we need to come together and try to provide more resources for our youth, so that we can prevent a lot of negativity. And not just that, we want to promote positivity.”