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\t\t\t\t\t\tMaryland Gov. Wes Moore: How to improve young men\u2019s mental health<\/a><\/p>\n But its approach is emblematic as a model for helping boys and young men thrive against the odds. Researchers are increasingly recognizing one secret to mental health that can be found inside the club\u2019s doors.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the solutions are really simple,\u201d said Bansee. \u201cYou give boys and young men the opportunity to bond in a deeper way. The real magic of Boys\u2019 Club is the sense of belonging and the friendships.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Niobe Way, a professor of developmental psychology at New York University, who has been studying social and emotional development among teenagers and young adults for almost 40 years, is not surprised that a search for boys in crisis would come out empty at BCNY. Her work led her to develop a theory: \u201cMental health is not the problem. It\u2019s a symptom of a social health problem,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Her studies have followed kids over time, observing the evolution of their narratives about friendship. \u201cThere\u2019s no gender differences in the desire for close intimate friendships,\u201d said Way, who wrote about her findings in the book \u201cRebels with a Cause<\/a>.\u201d \u201c[Boys] are incredibly relationally intelligent. Boys are just like all humans because it\u2019s a human skill, it\u2019s not a gendered skill.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet as boys reach 16, they begin experiencing what she calls a \u201ccrisis of connection\u201d and start to be less likely to discuss their feelings and connect to their friends. \u201cThey started to give up on their own what they wanted the most, which is friendships,\u201d she said, noting this is exactly the age when the incidence of suicide and violence increases drastically.\u00a0<\/p>\n She blames \u201cboy\u201d culture: the pursuit of stereotypical manliness, which prioritizes hard traits \u2014 \u201cthinking over feeling, autonomy over connection, money over people\u201d \u2014 versus soft ones, and defines masculinity by negating vulnerability. This is such an obvious challenge to mental well-being that a group of fifth graders recently diagnosed it, Way said: \u201cWhen I said, \u2018What\u2019s the predictor of mental health?\u2019 they said, \u2018When your friends don\u2019t treat you well\u2019. \u201cI started to laugh, and I said, \u2018I\u2019ve gotten millions of dollars in research grants to have that research finding.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The Boys\u2019 Club, to which she has been an adviser for years, is effective because it addresses the root cause, she said. \u201cAt some level what the Boys\u2019 Club does is simple \u2026 everything that they offer, every curriculum they have is infused with a desire to help young men bond with other young men across generations, and create opportunities to share hard and soft skills,\u201d she explained. \u201cAnd it\u2019s run with a lot of love. \u2026 When you walk in that space \u2014 it\u2019s a place of love.\u201d<\/p>\n A place of love<\/p>\n The club was founded by railroad tycoon E. H. Harriman in 1876, in the basement of a Lower East Side school in Manhattan. It offered reading materials and boxing lessons to keep kids off the streets; today, there are recording studios, swimming pools, robotics classes. The locations have changed as they city has: As once underprivileged neighborhoods turned into some of the most expensive real estate in the world, clubhouses closed in the Lower and Upper East Sides, and opened in Queens and the Bronx.\u00a0<\/p>\n At its core, however, the main ingredients of BCNY appear to have stayed mostly the same: space, care, structure, and a sense of belonging.<\/p>\n That\u2019s evident on a visit to the Abbe Clubhouse in Flushing, Queens, located in a big brick building belted by a mosaic depicting basketballs and waves. On the entrance door, a laminated sign dispenses rules \u2014 no Crocs or sandals (prone to making one fall); headwear needs to be off; and in all caps: NO EATING IN THE LOBBY. Beyond, the small front desk is covered with trinkets that boys have brought the receptionist: Minecraft figurines next to rubber ducks next to McDonald\u2019s Happy Meal gifts.\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tWhat does content creation do to mental health?<\/a><\/p>\n To the right is the pool, a steamy echo resonating each time its door opens, and to the left, a staircase leading up to the first floor. Written on the steps are BCNY\u2019s four core values \u2014 competence, connection, confidence, character. The stairs lead to a gym, a changing room, a game room, a large outdoor terrace, and classrooms with computers. And there is a quiet room where the boys can meditate, relax, or read. Throughout the building, walls are decorated with colorful portraits and quotes of inspiring figures.<\/p>\n Hanging out in the clubhouse on a recent day was a 9-year-old who was skeptical of the pool (\u201cbecause I was afraid, like if there was a drill and we\u2019re still changing,\u201d he said) and uses the meditation class to catch up on sleep, as he often wakes up by 5 a.m. to see his mother off to work; two impossibly cool teenagers discussing the resurgence of Air Jordans; and a little boy who could not believe he almost forgot his eighth birthday was the following week.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is their club,\u201d said Stephen Tosh, BCNY\u2019s CEO of the boys, who are referred to as members. In its early days, the status came with a joining fee: one penny as of 1893, the equivalent of 37 cents today.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cYou\u2019re not just a recipient, you\u2019re not just a charity case, you are a member. Membership has its privileges,\u201d said Ashanti Branch, a youth development expert and the founder and executive director of Ever Forward, an organization supporting African American and Latino students in the Bay Area. \u201cThose small little things play a big role in building the connection.\u201d<\/p>\n Abbe Clubhouse Director Orlando Nazario and other workers greet boys by name, and the halls are a riot of high-fives, bro hugs, back pats. Most of the staff dotting the building in red T-shirts are young men, and many are alumni of\u00a0BCNY clubhouses: when they talk about it, they say they \u201cgrew up\u201d there \u2014 as if those weren\u2019t institutions but rather the foundational landscape of their childhood and adolescence.\u00a0<\/p>\n The clubhouses provide boys a safe space and, crucially, some structure and programming, said Dominick Shattuck, a Johns Hopkins University researcher and a men\u2019s health fellow at the American Institute for Boys and Men. \u201cIt\u2019s easier to have a personal conversation or even to get to know somebody better when you\u2019re doing something else, whether it\u2019s football or shooting hoops or playing Dungeons & Dragons \u2014 whatever your thing is,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n He points to the success of Men\u2019s Sheds<\/a>, a program that provides men with access to workshops where they can work on projects together, with a belief that \u201cmen talk shoulders to shoulders, not face to face.\u201d The idea originated in Australia in the 1980s, as a response to a growing mental health crisis among men in rural parts of the country, and has been credited with reducing loneliness and suicide risk. \u201cThere\u2019s plenty of research around this, and these men\u2019s sheds are basically like a Boys\u2019 Club for adult men,\u201d Shattuck said.\u00a0<\/p>\n The club\u2019s leadership talks about its approach as \u201ccollective care\u201d: referring to an approach that borrows from traditions and ideas including Indigenous heritage, mutual aid, and the African concept of ubuntu, which means \u201cI am because we are.\u201d It\u2019s also built on a feminist framework that values interdependence over individualism, and though it originally aimed to improve the well-being of women and gender minorities, the leadership has found it can work just as well for boys and young men.\u00a0<\/p>\n Where \u2018you can be a kid\u2019<\/p>\n For members \u2014 especially the many who lack male role models in their lives \u2014 being around staff members who \u201cgrew up\u201d in the club and lived their same experiences provides a form of organic mentorship, and an opportunity to open up about their feelings with someone who not long ago was in their very same place.\u00a0<\/p>\n A boy who interacts with that kind of role model sees someone who experienced similar socialization pressure \u2014 in particular, the masculinity policing that, since an early age, mandates boys not be too sensitive or emotional, and deprives them of the opportunity of emotional expression \u2014 and yet is still able to express himself vulnerably, said Christopher Reigeluth, a professor at Oregon Health & Science University and the author of \u201cThe Masculinity Workbook for Teens: Discover What Being a Guy Means to You<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tTeens are turning to chatbots for mental health help. We need rules to keep them safe<\/a><\/p>\n Branch added that such informal, caring relationships allow a freedom that a boy may not feel when relating to someone who is a relative, or an authority figure such as\u00a0a teacher. \u201cIt allows a soft landing place,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Over and over in conversations with former members and caregivers of current members, they talked about an \u201copening up\u201d nurtured by the club. \u201cIn school, they would say, \u2018Oh, he\u2019s quiet, he don\u2019t say too much of nothing\u2019,\u201d said the single mother of a 17-year-old who joined the club as a first grader. At the time, the two of them had moved to a new neighborhood where they had no family support or connections, and she found BCNY to be a \u201cgodsend\u201d: He overcame his fear of swimming to become a member of the swimming team, joined sleepaway camps, and found educational support for his learning disabilities. \u201cWhen he gets to the Boys\u2019 Club he talks, he doesn\u2019t close out, he\u2019s open, the Boys\u2019 Club was able to give him that,\u201d she said, asking her name not be published.\u00a0<\/p>\n Another mother, Isabel, signed up her first grader to the club five years ago, following the footsteps of her brother \u2014 \u201cI used to be jealous that he went to the club and I had to stay home because it\u2019s for boys only,\u201d she remembered. Her now-10-year-old has gone from shy to social and is able to speak up for himself, and others. \u201cThe other day he told me that he helped a friend at school, because the friend was so upset and crying, and he helped the friend to calm down,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Relationships that are formed with peers and mentors in an environment such as the club can strengthen resilience, said Roselinde Kaiser, director for the Center for Healthy Mind and Mood at the University of Colorado, citing research showing that people who had one trusted person in their life to whom they could go \u2014 such as a teacher or a near peer who is a couple of years older \u2014 \u201cwere much more likely to expand into a broader network.\u201d In turn, she said, this network has the power to mitigate even the impact of stress-induced depression and anxiety. \u201cFostering those early connections can pay dividends in ways that are exponential,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n For the former members, going back to work at the club has benefits, too: an opportunity to give back and continue developing skills, and potentially a career. Layton McKenzie, who joined as a sixth grader in 2006 and at 31 is now a teen program director, describes joining BCNY as life-changing. It led him to attend boarding school on a scholarship, build lifelong friendships, and attend college.\u00a0<\/p>\n A young man of strikingly polite and gentle manners, he recalled how the club coaxed him out of his shell as he negotiated an environment very different from Southside Jamaica, Queens, where he grew up. \u201cComing to the boys club, it was very diverse and there were some [boys] that I never really interacted with before, and I didn\u2019t really know how. But our [mentors] gave us some prompts and they encouraged us to get out of our comfort zone \u2026 and encouraged us to just get along,\u201d he said. He realized \u201cthere\u2019s no need to be rigid or there\u2019s no need to feel like I\u2019m not protected. There\u2019s no need to feel unsafe.\u201d<\/p>\n So now, as a director, he said he stresses that members can let go of any outside grittiness and toughness. \u201cThis is not a place that you have to feel like you need to put up that persona,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a place that you can come and you can be a kid. You can come and be yourself. When you come to the Boys\u2019 Club, it\u2019s a brotherhood.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, this doesn\u2019t work for everyone. \u201cMy best friend actually was one of those that came and we started the boarding school process together and he unfortunately just took the completely wrong route. And I\u2019m here and he\u2019s in another completely different place,\u201d said McKenzie. \u201cSo, you know, that does happen.\u201d<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSign up for Weekend Reads<\/p>\n Informed, thought-provoking stories to start your weekend right<\/p>\n Members may not paint a picture of youth in crisis, but they still often face serious challenges: learning disabilities, ADHD, lack of financial resources, even homelessness. Recently, fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids has escalated anxiety for members from immigrant families.\u00a0<\/p>\n The club\u2019s policy is that membership is forever, but some boys stop coming. While in many cases the reason is moving, or going to a boarding school, there are boys for whom the club is not a good fit, said Tosh, the CEO. \u201cThe biggest issue we have sometimes with some of the younger boys is it\u2019s a lot after a long day at school \u2026 and some of the boys need a quieter environment after school,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Measures of success<\/p>\n It\u2019s hard to quantify the difference the Boys\u2019 Club makes in its members\u2019 lives, their well-being, their ability to form friendships, the processing of their emotions. These are benefits not measured in high school graduation rates, scholarships awarded, or swimming championships won.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIn most schools, you are measured by attendance, behavior, and core class success; no one\u2019s caring about your wellness, no one cares about your feelings, your emotions,\u201d said Branch.\u00a0<\/p>\n The club tries to capture some data, if qualitative. Recently, staff surveyed and interviewed more than 500 kids, third grade and up, who had been at BCNY for at least a year. What they found was that 95% of members felt safe at BCNY, 88% felt included, and 85% felt welcome from the very beginning. For about a third of the members, \u201cmeeting new people\u201d was the best part of attending.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kelvin Jarama-Nivicela, a 20-year-old from Corona, Queens, who attended BCNY starting when he was 7, said the friendships he built there continue to be foundational in his life: \u201cWe\u2019re a very close knit group, we do a lot of the stuff together,\u201d he said. So are the relationships he formed with his mentors. \u201cI always go to them when I have personal or professional problems,\u201d he said. \u201cEven recently I had a very difficult relationship with one of my supervisors, and I went to them for advice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Now working as an assistant project manager for a plumbing company, he said his ability to talk with people and network was a lot better than most of his peers. \u201cI feel like I\u2019ve avoided a lot of problems that come with feeling alone,\u201d he added. \u201cI feel like being in the clubhouse, really just literally physically being in the clubhouse, kept me away from that.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s scientific evidence to support that idea. \u201cLoneliness increases anxiety but also it increases sensitivity to rewards, which means it can have all kinds of behavioral consequences,\u201d said Livia Tomova, a researcher at Cardiff University in Wales who researches the role of social connection<\/a> in adolescents. This can include risk-seeking behaviors, in which the reward is attention or thrill. Further, socialization is an important part of cognitive development and during adolescence, as it facilitates the development of skills such as strategic decision-making or understanding the sense of self.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cInteractions with others are really crucial in order to develop these,\u201d she said. \u201cSo they\u2019re not just beneficial, they\u2019re really kind of essential.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Dionys Jimenez, a joyful 33-year-old former member who is now the club\u2019s education director, chose his career precisely because he saw firsthand the benefits the club had on him. \u201cThe Boys\u2019 Club was that space for us to be able to fail, to be able to learn, and then ultimately try to come out on the other side, a better version of ourselves,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n His generous smile flashed as he remembered being with his peers at the club day in and day out. \u201cI\u2019ve never really had any issues with sense of belonging or isolation or any of the things that young men unfortunately are facing today,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were facing the same battles together.\u201d<\/p>\n STAT\u2019s coverage of health challenges facing men and boys is supported by Rise Together, a donor advised fund sponsored and administered by National Philanthropic Trust and established by Richard Reeves, founding president of the American Institute for Boys and Men; and by the Boston Foundation. Our\u00a0financial supporters<\/a>\u00a0are not involved in any decisions about our journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014\u00a0A couple of years ago, a reporter approached the Boys\u2019 Club of New York looking to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,180802,259,260],"class_list":["post-754615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-mens-and-boys-health","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/260617_STATNEWS-BCNY_JOSEALVARADOJR_0426-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/a>A boys club member draws in a class taught by a local visual artist.Jos\u00e9 A. Alvarado Jr. for STAT<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/260617_STATNEWS-BCNY_JOSEALVARADOJR_0439-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/a>Students and staff in the hallway outside the STEM Lab.Jos\u00e9 A. Alvarado Jr. for STAT<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/Boxing-ring-and-crowd-in-gymnasium-at-Jefferson-Park-Clubhouse-East-Harlem-New-York-City.--1024x748..jpeg\")
<\/a>This historical photo from the 1930s shows a boxing ring and crowd in a gymnasium at the East Harlem clubhouse, which opened in 1927.New York Historical Society<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/SR_42_HP_STILL-1-768x432.jpg\")
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<\/a>Among the many activities offered to members are swimming classes.Jos\u00e9 A. Alvarado Jr. for STAT<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/260617_STATNEWS-BCNY_JOSEALVARADOJR_0338-1024x683.jpg\")
<\/a>Rashwun Knight, 31, a teen coordinator, supervises members as they enjoy video games in the teen lounge.Jos\u00e9 A. Alvarado Jr. for STAT<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/AP26166504541543-768x432.jpg\")
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<\/a>Layton McKenzie (left), who joined BCNY as a sixth grader and now works there as a teen program director at the Queens clubhouse, described it as life-changing and a \u201cbrotherhood.\u201dWilliam Yturbides for The Boys\u2019 Club of New York<\/p>\n![\"\"\/](\"https:\/\/www.statnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/stat\/images\/article-new\/envelope-open.svg\")
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<\/a>Dionys Jimenez, the Queens clubhouse\u2019s education director, chose his career because of his experiences as a member.William Yturbides for The Boys\u2019 Club of New York<\/p>\n