Young Mental Health Leaders Series: LGBTQ+ Youth Mental Health
Young Mental Health Leaders Series: LGBTQ+ Youth Mental Health
Tuesday, June 22, 2021
2:00 pm ET / 11:00 am PT
A recent report from the Trevor Project showed that almost half of all LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in 2020. At the same time, only half of the youth surveyed could access wanted mental health care. As we work to build better systems, young people are leading the way in creating conversations and solutions to improve mental health among LGBTQ+ youth.
Join Mental Health America and the GlobalMentalHealth@Harvard Initiative for the next 60-minute conversation in our Young Mental Health Leaders Series. In each session, we bring together leading researchers and young mental health advocates to discuss the current challenges and successes in youth mental health.
In this session, activist Juan Acosta will join Trill Project co-founders Ari Sokolov and Georgia Messinger to talk about their experiences as advocates in programs, policy, and organizations. The session will be moderated by Dr. Ana M. Progovac, Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Senior Scientist at the Health Equity Research Lab at Cambridge Health Alliance.
Presenters
Georgia Messinger (she/her) is a 21-year-old founder and activist who is the current Co-Founder and COO of Trill Project, an anonymous and safe mobile application for mental health peer support. Originally from Los Angeles, CA, Georgia is a rising senior at Harvard University studying psychology and computer science. In addition to social impact technology, she is passionate about venture capital and supports Black founders seeking funding for their startups through her role at Valence.
Ari Sokolov (she/her) is a 20-year-old founder, designer, and developer that has won national and international awards from the National Center of Women in Information Technology, the U.S. Congress, South by Southwest, Target, and Apple for her work. Currently, Ari is the Co-Founder and CEO of Trill Project, a mental health application with over 75,000 users. She is also a contributor to mental health technologies in the open-source community and an advocate for minorities in STEM.
Juan Acosta (he/him) is an award-winning LGBTQ+, Mental Health Advocate who serves on national committees, speaks at conferences and festivals, and is an NYT Bestselling Author for a book co-authored with Lady Gaga "Channel Kindness". He drafted a historic LGBTQ+ proclamation for his hometown of Woodland, CA. He currently serves as one of the Regional Managers for the CalHOPE Warm Line.
Ana M. Progovac, Ph.D. is an Instructor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Senior Scientist at the Health Equity Research Lab at Cambridge Health Alliance. Her research focuses on improving the quality of mental health care in the U.S., with a focus on reducing disparities for underserved populations. Dr. Progovac’s projects use a variety of research methods, including quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods research, implementation research methods, and community-engaged research. She is interested in approaches to improve mental health that span across systems, and therefore enjoys collaborating with students, community members, other researchers, clinicians, administrators, and policy advocates. She is currently the Primary Investigator on an NIMHD R03 award (and past recipient of a Harvard Catalyst Health Disparities Pilot Award) which both focus on measuring and reducing mental health care disparities for gender minority individuals in the United States. She is also the recipient of a Harvard Medical School Department of Psychiatry Kaplen Award to conduct a mixed-methods analysis of an implementation of a behavioral health home for patients with serious mental illness, as well as its potential for dissemination to additional sites within Cambridge Health Alliance.