If you or someone you love is experiencing a crisis, call or text 9-8-8 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
The staff at First Corinthian Baptist Church felt they had no choice but to tackle the issue of adolescent suicide risk in their congregation.
"Just the amount of phone calls we were getting," says Lena Green, who oversees mental wellness programs at the church in Harlem, New York. "I was probably getting almost 10 calls a week asking for services for teens."
She referred families to outside clinics and therapists, but they kept returning to her, unable to get the help and services they needed. More than one parent told her they were scared of going to sleep — fearful they would lose their child to suicide overnight.
"When we started getting calls about suicide attempts," says Green, "I was like, 'Oh, this is really bad.'"
In recent years, experts have sounded alarms about the mental well-being of teenagers of all races. Research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows escalating rates of mental illness among adolescents since 2010. Suicide is now among the top three leading causes of death for children ages 15-19.
Historically, Black teens were thought to be more insulated from suicide risk than their white peers. But experts caution this is no longer the case, with rates of suicide in this racial group increasing more rapidly than any other — one study showed a rise of 144 percent between 2007 and 2020.
Despite widespread concern about the issue of teen mental health and suicide in the media and among advocates, research has not yielded definitive answers, so far, about its causes or how to address the problem.
Some experts have been alarmed about the deficit of strategies that target Black communities specifically, given the especially steep rise in suicide risk for this population.
"Despite a growing body of research on Black youth suicide and mental health," wrote researcher Michael Lindsey in a 2019 report for a congressional taskforce on this issue "news coverage of suicide trends among American youth too often fails to mention specific developments related to Black youth suicide, which urgently need addressing."
At First Corinthian Baptist Church, staff take a direct approach. They work to help kids recognize a mental health crisis or prevent it altogether. First Corinthian is one of more than a dozen churches across the country that has participated in a national pilot, to study an intervention known as HAVEN Connect, to reduce suicide risk among young people.
"We know the Black churches are a trusted institution," says Sherry Molock, a professor of clinical psychology at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. She designed the intervention and is overseeing the research. "We know that they are really poised to help reduce stigma around mental health challenges in general, and suicide in particular."
At stake are the lives and wellbeing of teenagers in their congregation and communities — as well as those across the country who are without proven strategies to address this crisis.
Causes are unknown, but these teens offer clues
One recent day a 16-year-old named Janelle Davis dropped by First Corinthian after school to see Lena Green — everyone in the church refers to her as Dr. Green — she has a doctorate in social work and is a licensed clinical therapist. Kids come by to spend time with her in her office or just chat.
"Did you have soda today?" Green teases Janelle. She high fives her when Janelle tells her no. "What? Yes!"
Healthy eating is one of many subjects they talk about regularly. A couple years ago, Janelle was going through a rough time.
"I started isolating myself from people," she remembers. Her parents were divorcing. Her mother was struggling, and Janelle didn't want to burden her with anything else.
"I feel like we weren't really emotionally honest," she says of herself and her mother.
She started to have some disturbing thoughts about hurting herself.
Janelle wasn't comfortable bringing her struggle up with her mother, but she did feel like she could approach Green, who remembers some of the conversations they had during this time.
"We talk a lot about negative thoughts and, you know, negative voices sort of in our head, right?, " says Green. "About whether or not we're worthy — whether or not we should live or die."
Green also called Janelle's mother, Certina Robinson. Sitting in the church recently, Robinson remembers the day she got that call.
"I ran over here from the Bronx, and that's the first time I heard that she was having struggles with her mental health," says Robinson.
She was a newly single mother of four kids, holding down a job as an assistant principal at a school. She says she just hadn't seen the crisis in front of her.
"Dr. Green just kept reiterating, 'we want her to live,'" Robinson recalled. "'We want her to be happy. We want her to thrive.'"
Robinson says she's since come to understand that stigma about seeking treatment for mental health is something that's passed down through generations. Black families, she says, are especially vulnerable.
" You have to show that you're strong. You have to show that nothing can break you. That's what we're taught."
Weakness equals vulnerability. This is a paradox, she says — established as far back as when Black people were enslaved in this country — that prevents people from treating emotional wounds.
"It's amazing," Robinson says, "how our oppressors got us to avoid the one thing that would actually liberate us."
Contending with European beauty standards
There is a story that has become lore in the Green-Dorvil family from when their son, Gabriel, was a baby at a doctor's appointment.
"He was getting shots," says his mother, Marchelle Green-Dorvil, "He's probably 16 or 18 months old."
She remembers the doctor telling her and her husband, "He's going to be a giant." The doctor also gave Gabriel's parents this ominous warning: "People will automatically believe that he's aggressive."
Green-Dorvil says the doctor was right on both predictions. Today, people often mistake Gabriel for an adult.
"It's a hard concept for even teachers to grasp," says Green-Dorvil. "You're looking at someone that's 6'4", you know, a certain amount of pounds, a huge big frame. This is a 14-year-old child."
Gabriel says accepting this quality about himself has been difficult.
"I've had to adapt and understand that everybody's not going to see me the same," he says. "I've had to learn how to move around people."
There was a period a few years back when Gabriel was really struggling.
"I'm usually an extrovert," he says, "but during that time, it was just all shut down. Like I wasn't talking to anybody. I didn't talk to my friends. I didn't go outside. My bed was my best friend."
But he did get involved with a program that his aunt, Lena Green, was running at First Corinthian Baptist.
"Combating European standards of beauty, especially with children of color, has always been a challenge in our community," says Green.
Social media, she says, amplifies unrealistic beauty standards, as well as creates pressure on young people to own expensive things that can be out of their and their parents' financial reach.
She says the adults in these adolescents' lives can't keep up with unhealthy messages and influences they receive from social media.
"They have this device in their hand 24/7."
Something to look forward to
Certina Robinson credits the church and Dr. Green with saving her daughter's life.
"She helped her by giving her something to look forward to in the future," Robinson says of Green's work with Janelle.
The Thrive program for teens at First Corinthian Baptist aims to give kids a vocabulary about mental health, help them identify and name emotions, establish healthy boundaries, and articulate their feelings.
One recent day, 16-year-old Madison Hillard-James sat and filled out a worksheet that listed categories — things she could control, and things she couldn't: the past, the future, other peoples' opinions and actions.
" I had to set a boundary with a friend around money," she said as a recent example. The friend was constantly hitting her up for loans. She and Green rehearsed what she needed to say.
"I can't always give it to you, cause my mom works two jobs. So I just can't be freehanding and giving out money."
It's a small thing, but illustrative of a newfound confidence the teenager gained since participating in the Thrive program.
Madison's voice changed and became deeper as she went through puberty. "I was like 'Oh no, I don't like this about myself,'" she says.
She started doubting her worth and acting out in school. Then she began attending the teen program at First Corinthian Baptist. Since then, she's worked on embracing her unique qualities rather than hiding them.
"I'm a thick girly, I've got a deep voice," she says. "I tried to change it, it didn't work — so I just worked to adjust to it and really feel myself."
Kinship, guidance, purpose and balance
Molock, the clinical psychology professor who designed the national pilot and is also a trained pastor, used insight from programs that successfully reduced suicide in other populations.
Molock's curriculum focuses on four pillars: kinship, guidance, purpose and balance. She suspected that the intervention would more effectively reach students through the church than other venues such as school or medical facilities, institutions with which some people of color have had turbulent relationships.
" The specific cultural tailoring of suicide prevention is still in its infancy," says Leslie Adams, who studies Black mental health and suicide risk at Stanford University and is not involved in this project. She says the research that is happening at churches like First Corinthian is groundbreaking. While there are known strategies for suicide prevention in other populations, "there are unique vulnerabilities for this population — that they experience this, you know, chronically as kids and then at an everyday basis."
Adams worries that the country's current political and racial climate and the Trump administration's emphasis on ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs across American institutions jeopardize this fragile and emerging body of work. While the program at First Corinthian Baptist receives no federal funding, Adams says the research questions it raises will need to be taken up by institutions such as NIH or CDC in order to continue.
"Suicide prevention should not be political," Adams argues, and points out that the risk has broader implications for all of society. "Black Americans are a major part of our labor force, of our society, of our communities," she says. "This is also an economic issue."
For the families at First Corinthian Baptist, however, this issue is personal. Marchelle Green-Dorvil says she can easily see how things might have gone a different direction in her family, had they not had the Thrive program.
Gabriel Dorvil says it helped him come to understand that he has no control over other people.
"They're just not going to see me how my family sees me, how my friends see me," he says, acknowledging that it's instinct rather than reason that drives human behavior.
He says he's choosing to honor his own instinct instead — to live.
If you or someone you love is experiencing a crisis, call or text 9-8-8 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.
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