MADISON, Wis.\u00a0\u2014 Journey Mental Health continues its yearly screening of Madison junior high and high school students, reaching almost 4,000 students. The universal screenings help identify students dealing with mental health struggles that might appear fine from the outside. Parents can opt out of the program if they choose.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We learn that those students might be experiencing some symptoms of depression or symptoms of traumatic stress or anxiety,” said Journey Director of Youth Mental Health Services Nelsie Stern. “So that was a big. That’s always a big takeaway every single year. The other thing that we learn through screening students through our program is that we identify students who might not have revealed that they’re thinking about suicide, but they are. And so when we ask that question and they tell us what they’re thinking about, we can better support them and follow up for safety.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
Stern said one of the most important things to look out for is children isolating more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“(Teenagers) want to spend more time alone or with their peers, not with their parents or their siblings, but is it is it pretty extreme?” Stern said. “Is it keeping them from doing things that they used to do pretty easily? Are they avoiding things that they used to do for fun? Are they disconnecting from their peers?”<\/p>\n
Students identified with further needs are offered treatment at no cost. Journey is raising funds to support the program through its Beyond the Backpack program. It currently has a matching donor for the next $10,000 raised. Those interested in learning more can visit journeymhc.org\/beyondthebackpack<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u200bCOPYRIGHT 2026 BY CHANNEL 3000. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MADISON, Wis.\u00a0\u2014 Journey Mental Health continues its yearly screening of Madison junior high and high school students, reaching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":858334,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,983,259,260,3,452],"class_list":["post-858333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-health","tag-local-news","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-news","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858333","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=858333"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/858333\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/858334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=858333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=858333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=858333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}