Nearly 100 take part in Mental Health’s ‘Community Compass’ event

Seeking to better navigate CNMI youth and their families dealing with mental health, dozens of individuals from agencies under the Commonwealth Healthcare Corp., Division of Youth Services, and other government and non-profit agencies joined members of the CNMI Public School System’s Office of Student and Support Services’ Mental Health Program in the “Community Compass” event last Tuesday at the Saipan World Resort in Susupe.

The event began at 7:30am in the morning and concluded at 3:30pm, and during the meeting, there were networking activities, and community partner presentations, as different agencies learned the services of each program, while sharing their own, and how they may more accurately refer youth and families to the needed services and programs available.

Walter Mendez, the community project manager for Saipan under CNMI Public School Mental Health, shared that the day’s event was a collaborative effort to invite mental health services for youth and related government agencies and departments to get on the same page to see the services and programs that are being offered, whether old or fairly new.

“PSS Mental Health being one of the new ones, we wanted an opportunity to hear the different services that are available for our students, and be able to utilize that as a bridging tool for our services and our programs together to serve our kids better. Being in the field of mental health and knowing where people come from first of all I think it’s really important to address where is it that we want to go.”

Mendez said that activities were intentionally designed to cater to all audiences to get them to feel comfortable so that they can discuss and engage in conversations to better serve students and overall the people of the Marianas.

“We’re just hoping that we’ll be able to continue our connections with them so that we can move forward in having a well Marianas.”

With close to 100 participants representing different agencies, Mendez remarked, “There’s so many different programs that are out here to serve our kids and our community, but it takes something like this for us to all get together. Sometimes everyone gets so focused in their work and in their programs and sometimes it gets really difficult to find the space, so we wanted to create that space and make that conversation happen.”

Mental Health Program Clinical Services supervisor Dr. Jennifer Maratita said, “Part of our PSS Mental Health services is really connecting with our community partners, especially when we have students who are in need of these specialized services…We can’t do this alone. And with the support of our commissioner of Education, with the Board of Education, they really embraced mental health at different levels of services, even support staff, our teachers our educators.”

She said Mental Health Program’s Clinical Services has a staff of 20.

“We’re part of an amazing team that serves Saipan, Rota, and Tinian. Community Compass is really about helping us understand what are appropriate referrals to the mental health and substance use programs that cater toward our youth and their families…what are the best practices what are the do’s and don’ts, and we had amazing presentations from 13 partners from the private sector, non-profit, government agencies who just came together to share some of their insights with us so we’re truly grateful for all of them that came today.”

Maratita noted that topics focused on things they have been observing in CNMI youth in terms of needs for mental health.

“We’ve been seeing upticks in things like vaping among our youth, we’ve been seeing substance use in our youth, down to our little ones, and so really, think [assessing with] our partners about what we can do to pivot, address, and get ahead of the needs of our youth, from physical health, mental health, and substance use.

To make sure young people are most successful not only in their academics but also their social and emotional wellness.”

She then thanked all participating agencies like the Community Guidance Center and Systems of Care, Healthy Transitions and the Wellness Program under CHCC, Addictions Services Unit, Yes Program Youth Empowerment Solutions, Second Wind, Family Youth Enhancement Awareness under DYS, Special Education Services out of PSS, and the other agencies that joined them.

“We can really build these bridges to make appropriate referrals, but also these warm handoffs, having these conversations so that our families are not navigating these access points on their own…but where they have a team of providers who are in constant communication so that they don’t feel isolation accessing them on their own.”