Trained for Resilience: Transformative Peer Support

Social support networks

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Teens are eager to know how to support their friends during an emotional crisis. The 3 most common sentiments reported by teens who reach out to Teen Talk App are: (1) teens are seeking to be the person they needed when they were struggling, (2) they recently lost a loved one to suicide, and (3) they don’t want to wait for the worst to happen before talking to friends. Despite the desire to intervene many teens report lacking the skills or confidence to offer effective solutions. The pandemic amplified existing teen mental health crises with more than half of LA County’s teens in need of support. The LA Trust found that in 2018-19, 55% of students exhibited symptoms of depression, anxiety, or PTSD. When symptoms become intolerable and resources are not easily available the severity of these crises rise. In 2021, LAUSD reported 22% of middle school and 18% of high students reported suicidal ideation. Teens need low-barrier, teen-led, community-based alternatives to support one another.

Trained for Resilience is an in-depth social and emotional training and certification program for LA County’s diverse teen population who are seeking to support their peers in-need. Proven to be a highly-successful training and peer support community, the initiative arose out of the groundbreaking success of the Teen Talk App, which has supported over 100,000 teens and trained more than 500 volunteer teen advisors since it launched in 2018. By utilizing an interactive cohort model, teens gain confidence; learn active listening skills and support strategies to help intervene before, during, or after a crisis; and build a peer-support community around mental health education and advocacy. In post-training evaluations, teens regularly express the powerful impact this has on them: “The training gave me much more confidence in my communication skills and emotional intelligence and helped me develop community and social skills I could apply to life in high school." Aiming to prioritize equitable access for teen participation across LA County, we created a low-barrier and easily-accessible training that ensures even teens who don’t attend a school with a social-emotional curriculum can still participate. Our training program is offered at no-cost to teens through a live, interactive, online format that educates and empowers teens, "It has taught me about myself, improved my relationships, and overall has made me a more compassionate empathetic person."

Teens who go online to find support and answers for mental health concerns are brave. Whether seeking to feel less alone in their own crisis or for solutions to support peers in distress, it takes courage to reach out, and they deserve solutions that are built for them. Responding directly to countless requests from teens, schools and community partners to provide more effective mental health support for teens, the Trained for Resilience pilot will embolden LA County teens with evidenced-based training, advocacy and intervention skills, and the actionable steps needed to navigate a crisis. Trained for Resilience ignites a bilateral impact of peer support. First, by rewarding trained teens for their bravery with effective coping and support skills, an expansive peer-support community, and improved mental health. And second, through the extensive interactions impacted by their training, and improved conversations around mental health with the people in their lives they care about most.

A successful implementation of Trained for Resilience will be one that directly meets the needs of the teens it is designed for. With this as our aim, impact assessment will focus on participant satisfaction, skill acquisition, advocacy implementation, and consumer interest. We will measure these with pre and post-training assessments and 6-month post-training surveys. Assessments will reflect skill acquisition (can training participants successfully engage in non-judgmental, supportive conversations around difficult topics) and confidence (does participant’s confidence increase). Post-training surveys will track participants' use of skills in their daily lives. With scaling in mind, our pilot year will also focus on the creation of a youth-led advisory committee and their active role in building out the Trained for Resilience program, and an outreach plan to invite participation to every teen in LA County interested in the Trained for Resilience training