Our mission

Collaborate with youth, their families, and communities to accelerate the creation, implementation, and evaluation of innovative, culturally-responsive mental health and wellbeing programs, with an emphasis on increasing equity, expanding access, and centering youth voice.

fall 2023

Hey everyone! We hope our Center update brings some positivity and light to this season of Thanksgiving and celebration. We have been grateful for the enhanced national and state focus on youth mental health, while working to expand access for the increasing number of youth facing mental health challenges. 

I want to acknowledge our amazing Center team who, in partnership with our youth advisors and all of you, are expanding youth supports in so many directions: 

• Our Central allcove Team, with our state youth advisors, have supported the development of the initial five allcove centers and are excited to support the opening of additional centers across the state when they are named in the near future. 
• Our Media and Mental Health Initiative team has expanded partnerships with student journalists to support the dissemination of their new manual for college newspaper editors on appropriate reporting related to youth suicide. 
• Our Native youth mental health leadership team has led us through another exciting year of ECHO trainings, a national conference, and new national Listserv. 
• With our various youth partners, we continue to develop a peer-to-peer curriculum and a model for youth to train others in promoting the use of social media that protects one’s mental health. 
• Our PEPPNET early psychosis network is now a partner in the National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Early Serious Mental Illness. 

Thanks to all of you, our Center has had an amazing and productive year. We thank you for your tremendous support and wish you all a restful winter and holiday season. 

With gratitude, 

Steve

Working alongside our youth advisors, the Anti-Racist, Culturally-Minded Community Education, Support, and Services (ACCESS) team has developed an anti-racism guide that outlines our vision for making allcove a more inclusive and equitable place for youth of all backgrounds. The guide encapsulates youth-driven values tied to anti-racism in youth mental health, as well as suggestions on how to implement them in allcove centers nationwide. Hear directly from the co-creator of ACCESS and Central allcove Team youth advisor, Samskruthi, on the importance of ACCESS and its impact on youth mental health.

Program development

We are eagerly awaiting the announcement from the state Department of Health Care Services about funding awards through their Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative (CYBHI) that are expected to support the development of some more new allcove centers across the state. Stay tuned!

We celebrate as allcove San Mateo nears the milestone to soon open their doors to the public. We’d also like to wish allcove Palo Alto a happy second birthday and allcove Beach Cities a happy first birthday! allcove Palo Alto opened their doors in July 2021, and allcove Beach Cities opened their doors in November 2022. We appreciate their dedication and commitment to developing the first allcove centers and are grateful for these communities’ ongoing work to bring integrated youth mental health care to more young people in California.

Tribal projects to increase Native American youth mental health support

The Tribal youth mental health projects continue to support expansion and improvement of mental health care for Native youth through collaboration with Native and Tribal partners and programs, as well as local, statewide and federal agencies. This year was focused on building stronger partnerships across California and exploring how integrated mental health care can improve Native youth wellbeing. 

The Mental Health ECHO for Native American Youth 2023 series consisted of 14 virtual learning sessions created in collaboration with the 2023 ECHO leadership council. There were more than 1,300 attendees representing 33 U.S. states and 23 countries. Participants were from many disciplines, including medicine, psychology, social work, and school and community mental health. The didactic and clinical case presentations featured 28 Indigenous presenters representing 13 Tribal-serving organizations. Feedback from attendees highlighted the importance of cultural context in capacity building, inclusion of Native youth and Indigenous voices, and the need for better understanding the effect of historical trauma. 

We are also excited to introduce a new Listserv to promote the sharing of information, resources, and engagement opportunities to support Indigenous youth mental health and wellbeing. To subscribe, please submit our online form: Indigenous youth wellbeing Listserv.

Support for student and professional journalists writing about suicide and mental health

The Media and Mental Health Initiative (MMHI) continues to support professional and student journalists to report responsibly on suicide and mental health. The Reporting Responsibly On Campus Suicide (RROCS) guide was recently developed by Tammer Bagdasarian, Georgia Rosenberg, Savanna Stewart and Emma Talley, former editors of The Stanford Daily, in collaboration with the MMHI team. RROCS provides a set of guidelines and comprehensive education for college and university journalists writing about suicide and suggests effective strategies for covering wellness in the aftermath of crisis. During the fall of 2023, the MMHI team debuted RROCS and shared the TEMPOS Tool for Evaluating Media Portrayals of Suicide through trainings with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the Solutions Journalism Network, NorCal Media Day and at Palo Alto High and Gunn High Schools. MMHI is looking to share these tools with more college, high school, and professional journalists in the future to help journalists cover suicide without substantially increasing risk for suicidal behavior. 

#GoodforMEdia

This summer, #GoodforMEdia had the honor of being selected as one of 26 youth-led organizations in the inaugural 2023 Responsible Technology Youth Power Fund cohort. The team also received a generous grant from the Association of Auxiliaries for Children Endowment. With this support, #GoodforMEdia can further its mission to create spaces for young people to share tips and strategies to navigate social media for better mental health impacts. Our youth advisors have been actively presenting and leading workshops at various conferences and events including California’s Wellness Together School Mental Wellness Conference, the Youth Peer Support Action Summit, the Mountain View Teen Wellness Retreat and the Youth Leadership Institute’s HOPE Youth Coalition.

#GoodforMEdia also launched a blog that is now open for submissions! We are accepting submissions from youth who are passionate and willing to share their perspectives, thoughts, and ideas around the intersection of technology and youth mental health. In a recent blog post, Sonia, a #GoodforMEdia youth advisor, shares her Social Media Mental Checklist which introduces TEPA, an acronym detailing four ways to reflect on your intentions prior to opening up your favorite app (Time, Emotions, Plan, Affirmation). She created this tool to support herself and other youth who want to practice mindful engagement with technology and social media. Interested in submitting a blog post? Email us at [email protected].

Collaborative receives extended funding; welcomes new members

The Stanford Redwood City Sequoia School Mental Health Collaborative, our Center’s ongoing partnership with Redwood City School District (RCSD), Sequoia Union High School District, and the Graduate School of Education’s John W. Gardner Center for Youth and their Communities, was granted funding to continue this work for the next two years. 

We are excited to welcome two new clinical fellows to RCSD for the 2023-24 school year: Drs. Jordan Wong and Emily Whisler, who will be providing targeted counseling and care to K-8 students in need of support. In addition, we welcome Dr. Apurva Bhatt, who will be serving as their clinical supervisor and the primary faculty for the Collaborative moving forward.

A heartfelt thank you to our Southern San Mateo County youth advisors

Since July 2021, members of the Southern San Mateo County Youth Advisory Group have been active community advocates for allcove and youth mental health, with the goal of raising awareness, reducing stigma and educating the broader public about mental health resources and support.

• This past year, the third and final cohort led and participated in community events held by Chamber San Mateo County, Sequoia Union High School District and San Carlos Youth Center, among others.
• They also partnered with members of the Central allcove Team Youth Advisory Group to speak with international medical students from Volunteers in Asia on the importance of honoring youth voice and perspectives in medicine.

We celebrate their many contributions to our Center and look forward to hearing about the amazing things they will accomplish in the near future! 

Central allcove Team Youth Advisory Group

The Central allcove Team Youth Advisory recruitment committee is delighted to announce that, after an extensive recruitment process, this fall we have welcomed 25 young people (4 alumni and 21 new members) to the group who represent diverse experiences with mental health across the state of California. 

The outgoing cohort of advisors played an instrumental part in allcove development through their feedback on the importance of service integration, review of the wellbeing survey, direction on training peer support, suggestions for more youth friendly data collection, and participation in national conferences uplifting allcove youth engagement and intentional youth inclusion. They also created the foundation of a Youth Advisory Group network, which will unite all allcove center Youth Advisory Groups, with the goal of creating broader statewide youth networking and collaboration opportunities. 

Some highlights of their presentations include:

• Lucia joined the Central allcove Team in Washington D.C. at the School Based Health Alliance National Conference.
• Mack and Laura represented the youth voice on a national panel with Mental Health America and on a panel at the American Psychiatric Association conference in Washington D.C., where they introduced allcove and the importance of youth inclusion to psychiatrists from across the nation.
• Nina and Khoa were our main representatives at the Wellness Together Student Mental Health Wellness Conference. 

SAMHSA funds new National Training and Technical Assistance Center for Early Serious Mental Illness

Westat, headquartered in Maryland offering expertise in research, evaluation, data collection, and training and technical assistance, was awarded $14 million over five years from the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to develop a national training and technical assistance (TTA) center focused on early serious mental illness (ESMI). The Psychosis-Risk and Early Psychosis Program Network (PEPPNET) at our Center has been invited as a collaborator with Westat to develop the TTA center and to provide training and technical assistance, specifically in the area of early psychosis.  

Other collaborators on this project include the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD), the NASMHPD Research Institute (NIR), OnTrackNY, and the National Council for Mental Wellbeing.

PEPPNET is excited for this collaborative opportunity and looks forward to developing greater access to care for those experiencing early psychosis.  

Bree McDaniel

she/her/hers

Dr. McDaniel, a new allcove clinical services and training manager, is a licensed clinical psychologist, and has over 15 years of experience in the fields of mental health, academia, and the non-profit sector. She has provided direct service, as well as trained and supervised clinical psychology graduate students and other mental health professionals in a variety of clinical contexts including community mental health, inpatient, substance use treatment, school-based, human rights, private practice, and university settings. 

Janella Parucha

she/her/hers

Meet allcove's new data systems manager, Janella Parucha. Janella has been with Stanford University since 2013 and is based in the Bay Area. She graduated from San Francisco State University with a B.S. in health education. She has many years of experience working in data collection and data management in the public health field. She is very excited to be part of the Central allcove Team and work with the allcove centers using the datacove platform that will support a common evaluation. 

Apurva Bhatt

she/her/hers

Dr. Bhatt joined our faculty October 1 as a clinical assistant professor in the Stanford Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Her roles include serving in the Child and Adult INSPIRE Early Psychosis clinics, providing clinical consultations in schools, working with PEPPNET, and providing training and technical assistance in early psychosis program development in California and nationally. Dr. Bhatt’s clinical and research interests include early psychosis, prevention of youth suicide by firearms and the intersection of firearm policy, and Asian American Pacific Islander youth suicide.

Maria Esparza Sanchez

she/her/hers

Maria is an intern working with our team for 10 weeks, a proud first-generation recent college graduate from UC Davis with a Bachelor of Science in neurobiology, physiology, and behavior with minors in public health and Chicano studies. She has prior experience working with student-run health clinics that specialize in harm reduction, gender-affirming care, behavioral health and meeting people where they are regardless of insurance status. Maria is committed to advocating for mental health awareness, centering youth voices, culturally competent care, and ways to be proactive in integrating behavioral health into a whole-person care model.

The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry hosted their annual meeting in New York City. In collaboration with other our co-presenters, we were invited to present.

• Dr. Steven Sust explored the “Papageno” effect, which refers to the suicide-protective effect of storylines that depict characters pursuing alternatives to suicide. His two other sessions focused on the Asian and Asian American populations discussing how to improve parent-teen communications and common challenges experienced explored through the comedy-drama Everything Everywhere All At Once.
• Dr. Steven Adelsheim presented on our child and adolescent mental health ECHO for Native American youth and how it has expanded capacity nationally to support youth and families.
• In addition, Dr. Apurva Bhatt presented at many sessions, including essential awareness for clinicians treating youth with early psychosis, prescribing practices, diagnostic challenges between autism spectrum disorder and psychosis spectrum disorders, trends in youth suicide among Asian American and Pacific Islander groups, and opportunities for early intervention with systems-involved youth. 

Our Stanford Center’s work continues to capture the attention of the media. Below is some recent coverage:

• 14 funders partnered to launch first ever Responsive Technology Youth Power Fund
• Designing youth mental health services with Dr. Steven Adelsheim, Ei, Doc! podcast.
• How to safeguard teens’ wellbeing on social media, Healthier, Happy Lives Blog, Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. 
• Social contagion, from suicide to online challenges to eating disorders: Current research and harm mitigation strategies for youth online, Journal of Online Trust and Safety. 
• State grant to fund building for allcove, Easy Readers.
• Teens and screens: How to safeguard young people’s well-being on social media, Stanford Medicine Magazine.
• Why students want mental health check-ins at school, Teen Vogue.