Faculty and students help address teen mental health in Naperville

A North Central College faculty member and three students were instrumental in a year-long effort to develop a potentially life-saving training program for the City of Naperville. 

Titled “Unlocking Hope: Teen Suicide Disruptor Training,” the program is designed to teach local youth how they can intervene when someone they know is showing signs of suicide. 

The training will be offered in the community during the upcoming school year, starting with a presentation at the Alive Center in Naperville on October 23 at 6 p.m.

Dr. Leila Azarbad, professor of psychology at North Central, and psychology majors Cora Fejes ’24 and Noah Obermeyer ’24 as well as neuroscience major Natalie Falco ’26 were part of the task force behind the training. Other members included local school personnel, emergency room physicians, mental health professionals, organizational leaders, and law enforcement.

A Mayoral Priority

The 23-member group first met on May 1, 2023, the day that Scott Wehrli ’91 took office as Naperville’s mayor.

“Mental health touches us all,” said Mayor Wehrli. “Despite more resources being available, we continue to lose many lives to suicide. I knew walking in the door as mayor that I wanted to challenge our community to remove the stigma and encourage having authentic conversations to make a difference. I also knew there was no time to waste.”

Wehrli asked Azarbad to serve on the task force and lead its work to develop the training program.

“I first met Dr. Azarbad when she was applying to be a North Central College professor,” he said. “I recognized she had a passion for teaching and a magnetic personality that students would respond well to. Since then, I’ve heard from many North Central students and alumni about her impact on their lives and how she has prepared them for their next step, whether a career or grad school. She’s a professor who values research and how you apply that research in real life, and ‘Unlocking Hope’ is a perfect example of this concept. As a Naperville resident with high school-age children, I knew she had the background and ability to help with a project of this magnitude.”

The Process

Azarbad accepted the mayor’s invitation and invited Fejes, Obermeyer and Falco to join her on the task force, providing an opportunity to apply their academic knowledge in a real-life setting. The students attended meetings and saw up close how, through diverse perspectives, a group of dedicated community members can work together to solve a complex challenge.

“It takes a community coming together to impact change,” Wehrli noted. “We have the best and brightest minds in Naperville, including at North Central College. NC is a school known for producing changemakers, and we need that mindset for work such as this.”

In December 2023, the task force presented the training module to a group of local teens and asked for their feedback. The North Central student team had been key to the program’s design, developing case examples of teenagers expressing concerning statements about suicide, or showing suicidal behavior, on social media and in-person. Feedback from the teens helped inform further improvements.

“We made it more interactive and included new scenarios that the teens felt were more realistic,” Azarbad said. “The training teaches adolescents how to respond in a potential suicide crisis, what happens after someone reaches out for help … to prevent the onset of a mental health crisis. By demystifying the process, we hope to reduce the anxiety that often accompanies help-seeking.”

The revised version of the program was presented during a second training session at City Hall on April 30, 2024.

“The way this group came together was inspiring,” Wehrli said. “I will never forget the first class and seeing our City Hall meeting rooms filled with future disruptors, almost all of whom openly shared they knew someone in their lives who had expressed suicidal thoughts and behaviors. They wanted to learn the warning signs and how to help their friends non-judgmentally and direct them to professional resources. Seeing how this came together firsthand made all the work worth it to everyone involved.”

In his State of the City address in May, Wehrli said teens from all five district 203 and 204 high schools have learned how to recognize the signs of suicide and point their peers in crisis to professionals who can help.

A Valuable Learning Experience

Through their involvement in the project, the group of North Central students gained valuable experience in leading, creating, collaborating, and serving their community.

“They networked for themselves, met community members, and did such a beautiful job representing North Central,” Azarbad said. “They were instrumental in creating a modern, relevant, evidence-based training program.” 

Obermeyer said it was “an amazing experience to see from start to finish.”

Falco added, “I’m grateful I was given the opportunity to work with so many amazing people on a project that has made such an impact and difference. It was an incredibly unique experience. We took all the skills and topics that we’ve learned in our psychology classes and put them to use in a real-world scenario to help people.”

Fejes agreed, “Knowing this work could save lives reminds me why I studied psychology and why I want to work with people with mental health struggles. It is truly an amazing feeling.”