Mid Peninsula Athletic Association

During one of our practices, one of our players lost all control. He cussed out players, coaches, team managers and everyone in his path. We, as football coaches, see a lot of things we know that many times our players are dealing with, such as, normal adolescent development issues.  After this incident, we began to wonder if there might not have been some mental health challenges with this particular player. Upon further investigation, we discovered that he had suffered a very traumatic occurrence in his life. He had witnessed a completed suicidal hanging.

The Mid Peninsula Athletic Association decided to look into what to do for this young person and found out that there were limited resources because of various issues: financial, limited accessibility to mental health services, culture issues, stigma and family history. These were some factors hindering him from getting the help that he desperately needed.

Life's Playbook program was developed and incorporated with our football program. This program was designed to asess the prevalence of possible mental health issues in our participants.  We discovered that 69% of our participants had experienced moderate to severe traumatic occurrences that needed to be addressed. Aligning with San Mateo County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, Youth Mental Health First Aid for Youth a National Organization dedicated to giving child care providers information on how to recognize and handle possible mental health challenges, we began serving our young people and their families and taking a serious look at the mental health of all of our participants.

This effort has allowed us to assess and refer over 50 of our participants for services. The end results are encouraging.The families and the young person now have additional information to deal with an already overwhelmingly difficult time in their development.

Additional funding will help facilitate more trainings as well as more assessments to be referred for services offered by various collaborating agencies. We need your help to make sure we can continue this work. Remember, unresolved mental health challenges is a major contributor to suicide being the 3rd largest cause of death amongst our nations adolescents. This is something that we can prevent. Will you help?