The teenage years bring rapid physical, emotional, and social change. Personal relationships, family expectations, school pressure, and social media all shape the emotional well-being of young people.
August is Teen Mental Health Awareness Month — a time to recognize the challenges youth face and to remind them that asking for help is a sign of strength.
The Arizona Youth Survey is given anonymously every other year to 8th, 10th, and 12th graders across every Arizona county. It covers 20 categories and is administered by the Arizona Criminal Justice Commission Statistical Analysis Center in partnership with the Arizona State University School of Criminology & Criminal Justice.
In 2024, youth statewide reported high rates of academic failure, family conflict, low commitment to school, and low neighborhood attachment.
In Gila County specifically:
These last two categories align with the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) framework, established in 1995 to link early experiences of abuse or neglect to health outcomes in adulthood.
A separate study, the 2021 Arizona Youth Risk Behavior Survey (AzYRBS) from the Arizona Department of Health Services, found that 4 in 10 Arizona teens report poor mental health, and 23% reported thinking about suicide in the past year — with rates significantly higher among LGBTQ+ teens.
Bullying can take many forms, and recognizing them is the first step toward addressing them. Physical bullying includes hitting, shoving, or damaging someone's belongings, while verbal bullying involves name-calling, threats, or hurtful teasing.
Social bullying is often less visible but just as damaging — deliberately excluding someone, spreading rumors, or publicly humiliating them. Cyberbullying has become increasingly common, with harassment happening through text messages, social media, or fake accounts, sometimes following students home in ways that make it hard to escape.
Bullying can target a person's identity, including their race, religion, sexual orientation, or disability, and may take a sexual form through unwanted comments or gestures.
What ties these forms together is a power imbalance and a pattern of repeated behavior, rather than a single conflict or disagreement.
Lisa Allison, a licensed clinical social worker at Copper Giraffe, has worked as a mental health therapist in Globe-Miami for five years. She said, “There is lots of trauma in this town that no one wants to talk about.”
Allison said abuse leads to emotional pain. If young people and adults don’t get good quality mental health therapy, they often turn to drugs or alcohol to numb the emotional pain.
She said, in her experience, working with youth and their parents is more helpful than just working with the youth. It’s most effective when the family learns coping skills together.
One strategy she uses involves the Teen Lifeline. While she has the kids in her office in a good mood, they call the lifeline together. The young person calls the number and has a 3-minute conversation with the lifeline operator, simply to get over the initial fear of calling. Allison said this activity prepares them for when they’re on their own and need someone to talk to.
Allison's practice motto: "Do the work. Get better."
Melodee Hobbs, a local therapist with more than 55 years of experience working with youth and families, points to communication as the core issue. "It's always been kind of bad with kids not being understood by parents, and parents by kids. It goes both ways, and that's probably something that's never going to change," she said.
Her advice to parents: listen more, rather than judging or laying down the law.
According to the AzYRBS, supportive relationships are one of the strongest protective factors for teens' mental health — even a parent or friend who simply listens can make a difference.
Warning signs worth watching for include changes in behavior, talking about death, mood swings, isolation, and substance abuse. If you notice these signs, seek intervention and professional help. The mental health crisis line number is 988, and the Teen Lifeline is 602-248-8336. Both are available 24/7 and can be reached by call or text.
Locally, mental health agencies serving youth include Horizon Human Services, Copper Giraffe, and several other medical clinics and private practices.
What the therapists and the data reflect is that a lot of kids are carrying more than they're saying out loud, and that the adults around them have more room to notice than they think.
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