By Mark Kreidler, California Healthline, October 1, 2021
Phebe Cox grew up in what might seem an unlikely mental health danger zone for a kid: tony Palo Alto, California, in the heart of Silicon Valley. But behind its façade of family success and wealth, she said, is an environment of crushing pressure on students to perform. By 2016, when Cox was in middle school, Palo Alto had a teen suicide rate four times the national average.
Cox’s family lived by the railroad tracks where many of the suicides occurred. She got counseling. But that option, she told KHN, is not always easily available to teens in crisis — and she and her peers regarded school mental health services as their last choice because of concerns about either confidentiality or anonymity.
A new program, designed largely by the people who use it, provides an alternative. Called Allcove, it offers standalone health and wellness sites to those ages 12 to 25, often on a walk-in basis, at minimal or no cost. Although Allcove is built to support a wide range of physical, emotional and social needs, its overarching goal is to deal with mental health challenges before they develop into deeper problems.
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