$100k grant helps launch Robert Young Center's new youth suicide support program

Quad-City youth and the families struggling with their mental health issues soon will have a new youth suicide and self-harm support program to turn to for help. 

Thanks to a $100,000 Transformation Grant from the Quad-Cities Community Foundation, UnityPoint Health - Robert Young Center will create a community-wide support program that helps youth in crisis with therapy services as well as provides support to their families and the other community partners trying to address the issue. 

Christine Gradert, director of child and adolescent services, said the grant will add a clinician who will establish protocols for dedicated treatment and care for the youth, and lead the twice-weekly youth therapy groups and weekly support groups for caregivers. The program also will increase community education efforts to raise awareness of the sensitive issue of self-harm and youth suicide.

"The need just keeps growing and it's becoming more prevalent," Gradert said, adding the center, area schools, nonprofit agencies and the medical community are trying to address the issue. "But no one entity has enough capacity to start a program, which is why ours will be community-wide." 

Gradert said one of the keys is the treatment component — using the peer therapy groups — that is more immediate.