Nearly 150 students from about 10 area middle and high schools gathered at Lehighton Area High School on Friday for a daylong workshop on mental health and suicide prevention, part of a statewide effort to train young people to recognize when their peers are struggling and connect them with help.

The event was hosted by Aevidum, a nonprofit with nearly 300 clubs across Pennsylvania that was founded in 2003 after a sophomore student at Cocalico High School in Lancaster County died by suicide.

The organization’s Talk Workshop, its signature introductory program, brings students new to Aevidum together to learn the mission and develop mental health advocacy skills they can take back to their own schools.

“We are youth driven,” said Mary Pritchard, Aevidum’s director of outreach. “We lift student voices to engender hope and caring within schools.”

The program operates on a central premise: Students are often the first to know when a peer is in crisis.

“We recognize that students know before anyone if a peer is struggling,” Pritchard said, “and so we give them the tools to recognize when a friend’s struggling, and then get that friend to the help that they need.”

The morning began with video content and an overview of Aevidum’s mission before students broke into small mixed-school groups. Trained student leaders from Lehighton’s Aevidum club, described by Pritchard as a thriving chapter, facilitated discussions on why mental health conversations matter and what students can do to make a difference in their schools.

The curriculum is built around four characteristics of a healthy community — acceptance, acknowledgment, appreciation and caring for others — developed with Dr. Matt Wintersteen at Thomas Jefferson University. Students use those values to design campaigns within their own schools.

“That can look like a billboard,” Pritchard said. “It can look like handing out little tokens of appreciation. Whatever those ideas are, they develop them, and we use them.”

Aevidum describes its approach as a tier-one suicide prevention strategy, one focused on building a culture of connection before a crisis occurs. The urgency, Pritchard said, has grown sharply since the pandemic. Friday’s workshop fell on the sixth anniversary of the day schools across the country shut down.

“We know that over the last six years, because of the pandemic experience and the isolation that students experienced, the incidence rate of anxiety and depression kind of increased exponentially,” she said. “What we’re trying to do is kind of flip that, so that kids once again feel connected to each other and feel supported by each other.”

Among those leading small groups Friday was Patrick Devitt, a Lehighton senior in his third year with Aevidum. He said a friend first brought him to a meeting, and he arrived uncertain of what to expect.

“I showed up and I was a little skeptical at first,” Devitt said. “But as I got there, I sat down, and I felt just the sense of community amongst this group. They were very open, very loving and very just honest with their message.”

Friday marked his first time facilitating a group at a multi-school workshop. He said the experience started unsteadily but found its footing.

“That was very shaky at first, but as I got into it, I started talking with everybody,” he said. “Everybody is just so nice here.”

Devitt said the group activities, which asked students whether they had ever experienced anxiety before a test, for example, created space for a kind of openness that surprised him.

“Being able to be vulnerable with this large group of people, and seeing people participate and be vulnerable around others, I find that just an amazing thing to take away,” he said.

He said the experience in Aevidum has shaped him personally as much as it has shaped his approach to others.

“Being in this club has helped me to become the person I am,” Devitt said, “and it allows for other people to become that version of themselves, their true version.”

His advice for students who might be struggling was straightforward.

“Reach out to a friend,” he said. “You are not weak if you’re struggling. You are stronger for reaching out to somebody.”

Pritchard said the end of the workshop, when students take the open microphone to share their experiences, illustrates why the program matters.

“These students are hungry for this,” she said. “They’re hungry to be open about their experience. Some of them have personal, lived experience. Some of them have experience having lost family members to suicide. And to know that they’re not alone, that there are other people not only in their school but in this room saying, ‘Yeah, that’s my experience too’ — that’s powerful.”

When asked what she hopes students take away from a day like this, Pritchard did not hesitate.

“That they’re not alone,” she said, “that it’s OK to not be OK, and that it’s OK to be open about that conversation instead of being afraid.”

Aevidum provides its programming to schools free of charge, relying on grants and sponsorships to sustain the work.