Teen builds mental health course to help adolescents connect with emotions

Evan Chang thought his Monday morning would be like any other day his freshman year at Albuquerque Academy. After school, he would change into his soccer uniform, making sure to tightly lace up his cleats for the workout ahead — not prepared for the “jarring” news he received instead.

A teammate had taken his own life.

“I went into practice thinking he was going to be there, and he wasn’t,” Chang said. “It was a jarring realization that he was gone, and it took awhile to process that.”

Spurred by grief, Chang created a mural dedicated to reminding Albuquerque Academy students about the joys in life. Since then, the 17-year-old has taken an interest in mental health awareness and suicide prevention initiatives. And for his senior year, he went a step further with a project through the University of New Mexico’s Mental Well-Being in Adolescents Program.

Project ECHO is a virtual, human-powered program which connects frontline providers and global experts to provide training and mentorship to transform and sustain strong health systems. During his internship, Chang worked with Dr. Kimothi Cain, UNM associate professor of child and adolescent psychiatry, to create a virtual mental health course that features activities and modules to help people connect with their emotions.

The teaching of understanding emotions, regulating emotions and emotional intelligence ended up being the final project, Chang said. “I built that curriculum with the help of Dr. Cain, and then she worked on the facilitation of that presentation.”

Using his background as an Eagle Scout, Chang was able to connect with 14 Boy Scout troops. Through two 75-minute presentations, Chang and Cain taught Boy Scout leaders lessons surrounding mental health for teenagers. He created three modules: focusing on social media and its effects on teenagers; mental health disorders, including anxiety and depression; and suicide prevention tactics, including recognizing warning signs.

“We also have all sorts of supplementary materials,” he said. “We embedded podcasts we did with three different ages of middle schoolers and high schoolers about their opinions on social media and its effect on youth mental wellbeing. We had stuff on meditation and mindfulness. We had a whole package.”

Chang was shocked by the results and was even more surprised to learn how helpful the modules for adults were in explaining the youth perspective on mental health and how much the module seemed to connect with participants.

“They didn’t realize how much stuff they didn’t know about their emotions or social media,” he said. “The first step is awareness and the second step is education and bringing these things to your own understanding and thinking about how we can create those support networks.”

Chang plans to bring the project to the world, starting by expanding it to the Girl Scouts and bringing a modified version to the Albuquerque Police Department.

“I think this can go really far if we get it to the right people,” he said. “We’re trying to bring in what I did, but with a more discussion-based approach to social media and going into deeper topics like sexual abuse and juvenile crime. This is a great natural progression into really talking to the youth at a greater level.”