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With youth depression, suicide up, free counseling service in Seminole County offers help

SNAP provides free one-on-one counseling services for young people

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – Alarming new numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show our children are far worse off after the pandemic than most experts thought.

Youth depression, hopelessness, even suicide are all way up.

The new CDC report, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey Data Summary & Trends Report: 2011-2021, comes from 17,000 high school students across the country surveyed in the Fall of 2021.

About 40% said in 2021 they were feeling so sad or hopeless they could not engage in their regular activities for at least two weeks.

Almost 60% of female students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.

Nearly 25% of female students made a suicide plan.

The CDC saw significant increases in the percentage of youth who seriously considered suicide, made a suicide plan, or attempted suicide.

Jamie Grover, founder and CEO of the Special Needs Advocacy Program (SNAP) in Seminole County, was not surprised.

“And I tell you what, I blame our social media,” Grover said. “And Youtube. And young girls are given a false sense of what it is to be a young lady these days. It’s anxiety, depression, self-worth. Some kids resort to drugs. Some of the kids resort to crime.”

As the founder of really the only free one-on-one counseling service in Seminole County for special needs children and all children with all needs, Grover has been working to counter the fallout.

“One teacher can’t give individualized attention to the kids that are struggling so they slip through the cracks,” Grover said. “And once you lose something you can’t go back and relearn it. And that’s difficult because the kids start fading down and down and down with their grades. I don’t think there’s enough help in any county. And I think that mental illness is something that escapes a lot of people, they chalk it up to childhood.”

Grover renovated and opened the new SNAP headquarters inside the Seminole Towne Center near the food court last week.

In just that one week, nine families with children in need found SNAP inside the mall, walked up to the staff behind the front desk and started getting help immediately.

“It says that there’s a need for services out there,” Grover said. “There’s a desperate need for services out there.”

All of the SNAP staff are volunteers; it’s a non-profit that survives entirely on donations without any state, federal or local funding.

“One hundred percent of our staff for 12 years volunteer to make this organization go,” Grover said. “None of us get a paycheck.”

Grover founded SNAP 12 years ago with his own money because of the need even back then.

“We want our kids to be able to talk and understand there are alternatives to crime, drugs, alcoholism, suicide,” Grover said. “It’s a place to go. We need more places like us for kids to go in every county.”

Now, Grover and his counselors meet with as many as 20 children a week between 18 and 13 years old.

“Thirteen is young and I tell you, there’s times we’ve seen younger than 12,” Grover said.

[RELATED: How to get mental health help in Central Florida]

SNAP also counsels parents on how to counsel their kids and teaches them how to be better parents.

Grover has never lost a child but he’s come close, especially lately.

“A young lady called me and needed to talk to me and when she calls me I stop everything and I said come up we’ll talk,” Grover said. “And one thing she said is ‘I never thought I’d see the day where I didn’t want to kill myself.’ And I walked back and — you can ask my staff — I was bawling. Because that is the best thing I could ever hear.”

If you or someone you know needs help, Grover promises he and SNAP will help in any way they can, free of charge. Go to the SNAP website to contact them.

You can also donate or become a SNAP sponsor on the SNAP website.

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