Preteens who are struggling with their mental health can now receive the same help that teenagers in Brookfield get.
Starting Thursday, Feb. 1, The Loft at Eight Corners opened its doors to seventh and eighth graders ages 12 and up. The free mental health clinic, located on Monroe Avenue, had first geared its services solely toward high schoolers.
Loft Coordinator Adrian Cardenas said Thursday that the conversation around expanding the Loft’s programming to include younger students started in August, just months after the clinic opened its doors last March.
“As we were looking at those who were utilizing our programming in high school, [there were] a lot of our freshmen and sophomores,” he said. “At the same time, too, we had a lot of inquiries in the beginning of if eighth graders are able to participate, and we had to unfortunately turn them away.” He said the Loft had also heard from nearby schools that the clinic’s services “would be a much-needed resource” for their middle school students.
The Loft, a collaboration involving Pillars Community Health and NAMI Metro Suburban, offers myriad services to the teenagers who walk through its doors as well as their families. The Loft’s biggest piece of programming is its group support meetings, where teens — and, now, seventh and eighth graders — can come together to talk about, learn about, and build skills to support their mental health. Since the Loft is open seven days a week from 1-8 p.m., it offers multiple group meetings each day, usually in the evening so students can attend after school.
Outside of those group meetings, the Loft offers family support services for family members of participants to ask questions, learn, and build their own skills to use within their families. The clinic also provides one-on-one meetings with its recovery support specialists, trained staff members that Cardenas described as “young adults living well in their mental health recovery” who can share their own experiences with mental health with the Loft’s participants.
While much of the Loft’s programming will be available for everyone, Cardenas noted that the clinic’s group support meetings are where things will differ by age.
“Middle schoolers will have their own groups at their own times, and then high schoolers will have their own groups at their own times,” he said. “We will never really mix the two just because, developmentally, they’re on different levels, and we’re wanting to really keep them all within their same age group.” As a result, the programming calendar on the Loft’s website specifies which events are for middle schoolers and which are for high schoolers.
Ultimately, Cardenas said, “prevention” is the Loft’s biggest goal in expanding who can receive its services.
“Whether or not [youth] are struggling with their mental wellness … we want them to come in to utilize our services so that they have skills to put into their toolbox,” he said. “If things do arrive, they then know how to handle those situations.”
