youth mental health

In the auditorium of Roxbury’s Eliot Congregational Church, young people and community members gathered amid swirls of cotton candy and the aroma of buttered popcorn to showcase the voices of local youth through a teen-run film festival.

Patricia Oduah thought her experience as a clinician and social worker would leave her prepared to parent kids coming out of the foster care system. But when she and her husband welcomed three siblings from foster care, the experience proved more challenging than expected.

City efforts to address youth mental health challenges have reached thousands of Boston’s young people, according to the Boston Public Health Commission.

Resilience alone cannot address the mounting mental health challenges facing our young people. These struggles reveal the need for a fundamental shift in how we approach mental health — not as an isolated issue but as one deeply connected to the environments and realities that shape their lives.

As evening fell on Dec. 5, over a hundred Boston teens packed into a warmly lit space down the block from Boston City Hall.