Helping Teens Find Hope: Anxiety, Depression, Suicide
October 10, 2020, 1–4 P.M. MST
Summit Ministries presents a special 3-hour live stream event Helping Teens Find Hope. Pastors, teachers, parents, and concerned adults will learn practical strategies for connecting with the hearts and minds of teens to help them find healing and become resilient, hopeful adults.
Gen Z faces a mental health crisis. Anxiety and depression are at an all-time high. Suicide has risen to alarming levels.
Some dismiss mental health issues as a “snowflake” problem but new evidence shows that it is a complex and often deadly public health emergency. Technology has propelled the rising generation into nervous exhaustion. Economic uncertainty has robbed them of a path to success. COVID-19 and the unraveling of civil society have only added fuel to the fire.
Will the church be on the sidelines as this generation spirals? Gen Z already has the lowest level of church engagement of any generation in American history. Polls show that young adults do not believe that churches–or their parents–have answers.
It is time for believers to rise up and help Gen Z emerge into adulthood with strength and confidence.
Event Details
Dr. Jeff Myers
Youth leadership expert and president of Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs, Colorado
Gritty Kids in a Fragile Age—Biblical Thinking About Culture and Mental Health
Dr. Joannie DeBrito
Licensed mental health professional and Director of Parenting and Youth, Focus on the Family
Teens, and Mental Health: Hope and Healing for a Struggling Generation
The rise in mental health problems among our teens and young adults has been well documented. Approximately one in four young people now struggle with depression and/or anxiety and suicide is the second leading cause of death among those 10-34 years of age. In this presentation, Dr. Joannie DeBrito will discuss some of the reasons for this troubling trend and offer reasons to have hope for reversing it. Parents and others will learn how they can use the power of relationships, personal engagement and wise counsel and guidance to promote spiritual and emotional healing in youth.
David Galvan
Trainer in Adverse Childhood Experiences, Director of Education for a Lifetime
In This Together—Teen Suicide Prevention
More than half of the people experiencing a mental health crisis will reach out to their faith communities first (NAMI). With 1 in 5 young adults living with a mental health illness and teen suicide rates at an all-time high, faith communities have an opportunity to meet our students during their crisis; by providing a holistic approach to help, healing, and hope. By engaging in this topic, resourcing training for staff and volunteers, and providing additional community resources we can increase our ability to be conduits of care to our community at large. We believe that through faith community partnerships we can provide protective factors for the community at large to combat mental health stigma and suicide, yet how we approach these conversations can directly impact faith-based communities’ willingness to engage and participate with the topic of mental health.
Who should attend?
If you are a church leader, parent, or educator (CEUs available) who is searching for answers about how to come alongside this generation, then this event is for you. If you walk alongside students guiding them to think for themselves as they interact with ever-changing culture, this event is for you.
Your community and church need this training. Plan today to host this event at your church or home today!
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“It’s going to be a special three hours together as we rally on behalf of a generation that is grappling with an unprecedented level of anxiety and depression. For parents and caregivers, this is a Joseph moment—God is sending us ahead to preserve the lives of many.” —Dr. Jeff Myers, President of Summit Ministries
How to Register
Can’t make the time of this event work into your schedule?
Sign up anyway! The on-demand recording will be made available to all registrants after the event. If you have any questions, please call us at (719) 685-9103 or contact us here.
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Additional Resources
Daniel P. Huerta, Focus on the Family’s Vice President of Parenting, presents a collection of seven powerful character traits designed to help parents grow and thrive while raising godly children.
Sign in here for a free chapter preview!
Archived Events
Summit Basecamp is a free content series Summit hosts, to equip adults with a deeper understanding of apologetics and biblical worldview to effectively walk alongside students in a post-Christian culture. Each three-hour Basecamp event will explore a different relevant topic with speakers who are experts in that area.
How can we help students make moral decisions in a morally complicated world?
Never before have your students been presented with so many options and different perspectives on how to make ethical decisions. The culture screams at us to “live our own truth” and tells us to “be a good person” while new technologies and a changing political landscape are framing our minds to focus on an idea of good that isn’t consistent with a Christian worldview. What do we need to be able to make God-honoring moral choices in an immoral world?
What is your role in promoting life?
January of this year marked the 45th year since the Roe V. Wade decision in the United States. As our country seeks answers to fundamental questions about the value of human life, take time to reflect on the answers your students are adopting as their own. Do you feel equipped to help your students think critically about the answers they are believing?
Think critically about the ethics of abortion and questions regarding beginning and end of life issues and technologies that directly impact our communities. When we think critically about hard issues we can connect with students to help move them beyond what they feel is right and on to pursue biblical truth.
Navigating a Technological and Pornified Culture
Many teens suffer from isolation, depression, loneliness, and anxiety. This event will focus on how pornography and the increasing use of technology plays a role in these effects. When students look for community and acceptance through technology or intimacy through pornography they slowly lose their ability to live fully as God intended and to connect with others in meaningful ways.
Dr. Kathy Koch, Jonathan McKee, and Haley Halverson will lead you through sessions to explore lies that students are believing about community and self-esteem found online and practical ways we can work to challenge students for more face to face engagement.
Truth & Relationship in a Sexually Confused Culture
Same-sex marriage and homosexuality are becoming more prominent, accepted, and normalized within our culture. How has this affected the way your students view sexuality?
Worldview experts John Stonestreet, Dr. Christopher Yuan, and Caleb Kaltenbach will equip you with information and practical strategies for helping students to navigate within a sexually broken culture.
Practical Tools for Equipping Gen Z
Every generation has its ups and downs, but Gen Z is unique—there has never been a generation in America so thoroughly captured by the culture, so thoroughly enmeshed with social media, and so secular in its thinking about the world. How do we develop relationships of grace that do not ignore the truth?
Generation Z experts, Dr. Jeff Myers, Jason Jimenez, and Mike Sherrard will lead you through sessions on relationships, role models, identity, and biblical authority.
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If you have any questions, contact us here.