At Behavioral Health Tech 2025, we had the privilege of showcasing a youth-led research exhibit as part of the conference programing.
At AIM Youth Mental Health, we bridge the gap between youth mental health research and access to care by finding, funding, and implementing evidence-based treatments and empowering youth to discover their own mental health solutions.
Beyond the collaboration itself, what stood out was the impact of having young people in attendance at BHT alongside providers, funders, tech developers, and researchers, all contributing equally to conversations. Since that moment, we’ve been sitting with one question: What else are we missing?
So we asked young people from our youth-led research program, AIM Ideas Lab, to tell us honestly and directly about their mental health experience.
Through a series of questions, here’s what we heard, what we learned, and how it’s shaping our work:
1. Distress Hides in Plain Sight
What we heard:
“Mental health shows up in my day-to-day life through asides made in the wrong setting or to the wrong people. Teens will vaguely mention something that should result in their friends checking in on them, but communicate in a tone that suggests frivolity or do so when their friends are distracted. The line becomes blurred between what really is a conversation about mental health and what is a footnote comment during a larger interaction. It’s difficult to identify when someone is asking for help or when they just need to be listened to because direct communication is rare.”
Another teen shared: “This may sound a little strange, but constantly repeating ‘I’m fine’ actually contributes to feeling worse. For me, the more I say ‘I’m fine,’ or the more I smile, the more I am truly struggling inside. I feel as though a lot of teens may deflect better, or more convincingly if you will, when they are feeling worse.”
What we learned:
Stigma doesn’t just shape help-seeking; it also shapes how distress is communicated.
What looks like casual conversation often carries weight that’s easy to miss. Reflecting on the comments made in passing, the joke that’s full of cries for help, and the convincingly I’m okay when it feels anything but. Adults, we do this too. We say “I’m fine” when a coworker asks how we’re doing, downplay struggles to avoid worrying loved ones, or stay quiet when we’re not sure how real we can be. Young people are not necessarily hiding their struggles so much as translating them into a language that is socially safe and common for them. The challenge is that it doesn’t translate into our systems if they are expecting an explicit ask for help, clear signals, or a crisis. We learned to look for distress in subtext, tone, and moments that blur the line between venting, everyday conversations, and asking for help.
2. Youth Want Skills to Support Friends and Need Trusted Adults
*Note: “Peer support” in this context refers to informal friend-to-friend support, not certified peer counselors.
What we heard:
“When adults talk about youth mental health, they underestimate the ubiquity of stigma surrounding the current mental health crisis. Many of my peers want to help their friends or peers in times of need, but don’t know how. By not addressing mental health more in school settings, it has become taboo and unmentionable. Based on AIM Ideas Lab findings from 2025, approximately 31.3% based on the AIM Ideas Lab findings, with only 7.9% seeking professional help as a coping mechanism. It is imperative that the youth demographic in general receive greater mental health education and training. Basic skills, such as when to involve a trusted adult or how to calm down someone who’s in distress would be of great benefit.”
Additionally, when adults discuss youth mental health, the framing often misses this current reality. As one teen explained, “Some adults treat mental health as though today’s youth had a ‘choice’ to be struggling significantly more than other generations. Adults may treat it as though it was the child’s fault for using their cellphone too much, when in reality media algorithms have been designed to draw in audiences and leave them stuck. Addicted.”
In discussing phones, another teen emphasized that for young people they are, “the modern way of communication and expression: its use is inevitable.” Continuing to say, “I believe that adults don’t fully understand how toxic our generation has become. It’s true that severe bullying and racism existed in the past, but horrors have become normalized at school (mostly middle and high) that were not a thing of the past. There’s a reason why mental illness has risen.”
What we learned:
Mental health support and solutions should exist across a spectrum.
Today’s youth landscape is shaped by digital communication, increasingly toxic social conditions distinct from those of previous generations, and peer networks that serve as first responders to mental health crises. Within this reality, teens navigate mental health across relationships, spaces, and moments simultaneously and seek support across the full range of their lived experience. One immediate action we can take as trusted adults is validating their distinct realities. Acknowledging that we may not fully understand today’s challenges, rather than dismissing them based on our lived experiences, can be the deciding factor in a young person’s willingness to reach out for support. This then lays the foundation while we build the comprehensive support systems youth need, such as equipped peers, accessible community resources, and skills for navigating both digital overwhelm and in-person connection. Support that exists across their friendships, online interactions, responses to environmental pressures, and peer attempts to help one another.
3. Why Youth Voice Matters
What we heard:
“A lot of institutions in my community believe that just providing mental health resources is sufficient to combat existing mental health issues. I’m reminded specifically of a yearly event my school holds called Unity Day, where tenth graders are broken into groups of their peers and encouraged to be vulnerable. The goal is to serve as a reminder that everyone is dealing with personal conflict, but this event is viewed disapprovingly by many students because the level of trust required to elicit widespread vulnerability cannot be achieved in an hour-long rally by talking to people you barely know.”
“Teens are accustomed to not being in positions of power concerning their mental health, instead expectations of participation are placed upon them. Adults and institutions should aspire to build trust with them over time by allowing young people to control when they want to share or be involved in order to promote long-term collaboration.”
“If teen voices are excluded from this discourse, mental health challenges will become normalized without creating long-term solutions and infrastructure for change. Teen voices are necessary to demonstrate what solutions aren’t working and to identify how young people can be better supported.”
“Connection on a personal level would be missing: Generation Alpha and Z are quite different from any other generation that came before. There is a strong difference between being ‘helpful’ and ‘patronizing’ that adults just miss unintentionally. In our era, generalized anxiety disorder is a normalised condition, even if the student themselves doesn’t realize it. Whether it’s school or things going on in the world that are so insane and out of our control, teens are truly struggling.”
What we learned:
Young adult expertise surfaces the conditions that lead to mental health engagement. It helps us understand their values and identify what’s invisible from the outside. From above, we learned there’s a thin line between genuine and performative, that connection can lead to openness or create distance, and that agency encourages participation while expectations shut it down. When teen voices shape how support takes form, they don’t just improve what already exists; they reveal what’s essential for support to reach them in the first place. This is far beyond including the youth perspective as a best practice. It’s about gaining the understanding that makes the difference between designing perfect solutions and the ones that actually work, a theme we explored in “What Youth Engagement Taught Me About Power and Trust,” read to learn more here.
What Gives Us Hope
In addition to their truths, teens shared what sustains them:
“I feel very encouraged by the support and collaboration of schools and community organizations like AIM that are willing to let my generation take the lead and speak personally about trends we observe and how mental health intersects with our lives. Prior to the BHT Conference, I didn’t realize how valued teen voices were in mental health, but after this experience I feel much more hopeful for the solutions that youth-led research can provide.”
“Experiencing kindness and trying my absolute hardest to spread it, makes me hopeful that the future will be more accepting of kids who are different. Kids who are disabled. Kids who are of minorities. Just making one person smile a day leads to 365 others you have helped smile in a year.”
What we learned:
Hope lives in two places: in systemic shifts that center youth authority and in people consistently showing up for each other. One teen finds hope in being trusted to lead rather than just participating. Another finds it in the ripple effect of small acts of kindness, 365 moments across a year. Both point to what we can all carry. Change happens when power is shared, and compassion is practiced. The future these young people describe is bright, and they’re reminding us that hope is an action, and being heard and showing up for each other are things we can all do, no matter where we are!
What We’re Building Next:
The answers to our questions sparked rich, insightful conversations that we couldn’t address in one article. What young people shared about mental health apps, design assumptions, and what mental health solutions actually work deserves its own exploration. And we are happy to share that’s what’s coming next!
Here’s what became clearer for us at BHT Impact: the most important stories about this work should come from the people living it, youth navigating mental health systems, and caregivers walking alongside them. Their voices carry the kind of understanding that changes how we see this work, and once you see it that clearly, you could never go back to any other way.
So, we’re launching a writers network program for youth and caregivers this year. A space for their voices to connect and shape how youth behavioral health is discussed, addressed, and understood. We’re still in the design stages, being deliberate about how we build it, and bridging our intention with the goal of meeting youth and families where they are.
These conversations have truly taught us something fundamental: who tells the story determines what we see.
This piece was originally published on BHT Impact and reflects a shared commitment to centering youth voices in shaping the future of mental health. We’re grateful for the partnership and for the space BHT creates to bring together young people, providers, funders, and innovators in meaningful dialogue.
To continue the conversation, follow BHT Impact on LinkedIn for insights at the intersection of behavioral health and innovation and follow AIM Youth Mental Health on LinkedIn to stay connected to youth-led research, evidence-based solutions, and the work we’re doing to expand access to care.
