DuPage County to host mental health summit focusing on youth
Mental health and services available for youth will be the focal point of a mental health summit Saturday in DuPage County.
The DuPage Council on Strengthening the System is hosting its second biennial summit featuring keynote speaker Ross Szabo, a nationally recognized mental health advocate, author and wellness director at the Geffen Academy at UCLA. The summit also includes panel discussions, tours of the recently opened Crisis Recovery Center (CRC) and an expo featuring 40 mental health and substance treatment organizations.
The summit comes just eight months after DuPage County opened its CRC, which includes a specialized youth unit and provides an alternative to emergency rooms or law enforcement intervention for youth experiencing a mental health crisis.
Since its opening, the CRC has provided 273 on-site youth assessments, with 95% of those assessments ending with community care, allowing youth to find support and care closer to home, officials said.
DuPage County Chair Deborah Conroy, who also heads the DuPage Council on Strengthening the System, said that for many years, just finding services was a challenge. The CRC and other programs, including a mobile crisis unit, crisis phone line and screening services, help fill a critical need.
“In DuPage County, we understand that it’s OK not to be OK,” Conroy said.
Szabo said he plans to share his personal mental health experiences and help better define some of the terms used in mental health.
“When we say the words physical health, everyone knows what it means,” he said. “But when we say mental health, it means different things to different people.”
He said creating a better mental health literacy will help better define needs. For example, there is a difference between feeling nervous or having an anxiety disorder or between sadness and clinical depression.
He also hopes to let people know the power that comes from sharing experiences and promoting mental health awareness.
Conroy said she hopes the summit helps empower parents or children and makes them feel a bit more at ease reaching out for help.
“We want them to feel welcome and not have any barriers or stigma that reaching out for support might have,” she said.
“Every youth who crosses that threshold is one less adult who is going to struggle with mental health as an adult … and that’s really what this is about,” she added.
The summit will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, May 9, at the DuPage County Administration Building, 421 N. County Farm Road, Wheaton.
While registration for tours is no longer available, limited spaces remain for the expo, keynote speaker and panel discussions. Registration for the event is required.