News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Growing up in Sisters has many benefits for youth. It's still a tight-knit community that looks out for its people; schools are strong and staff works hard to build beneficial relationships with students. Yet it's still challenging to be a 21st-century kid, no matter where you are.
Mosaic Community Health's school-based clinic in Sisters works with local families, including helping with behavioral and mental health concerns. Pictured left to right: Sarah Leet, PA-C, Danielle Varner, Jackie Muñoz, and Lindsey Overstreet, LCSW.
Lindsey Overstreet is a licensed clinical social worker working in pediatric behavioral health at Mosaic Community Health's school-based health clinic in Sisters. She works with youth who may be struggling with a variety of issues. She will be one of the featured speakers at the upcoming C4C forum titled "Are the Kids Alright?" set for November 17, 4 p.m., at the new Sisters Elementary School.
"I think there's a lot of strengths in our community - and there's just a lot of universal challenges for kids right now."
Connection with adults is a marker for the well-being and success of youth, and Overstreet thinks the Sisters community provides those connections.
"We do an incredible job in a variety of ways of connecting kids with adults - with safe adults - in our community," she said. "It's rare that I see a kid in my practice that doesn't have that. The ones who are not alright don't have that."
Such connections can be family, teachers, coaches, mentors - and often there are a variety of those connections in a child's life here.
"I think that's a real strength of Sisters," Overstreet said. "There are people looking out for kids in our community."
However, Overstreet is seeing a trend that tracks with national and even international trends: "I have seen a real increase in anxiety and eating disorders since 2020."
Overstreet attributes some of that increase to the continued fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, and the disruptions it created in everyone's lives.
"We never really had a close to that chapter," she said.
The omnipresence of technology seems to be a clear culprit in the significant uptick in anxiety. Children, particularly teens, can experience really cruel cyber-bullying (often from people they know) and invidious comparisons with curated versions of other people's lives that make them feel inadequate. Screen time alone can impede healthy engagement with the world.
"They're so engrossed by technology that they're missing out on real life," Overstreet said.
Overstreet is not advocating for an unrealistic turning away from tech.
"I'm not saying no tech ever, that's our lives," she said.
She does, however, advocate strongly for parents to empower themselves to establish rules and boundaries. She says it's particularly important to keep screens out of kids' bedrooms at night. That's often when they get bombarded with negative content - and it's hitting them at a particularly vulnerable moment.
"They're seeing this content when they're ...vulnerable - and after they don't have an adult around to help them process it: late at night," she said. "Kids should not have screens, phones, tablets when their parents are sleeping. It shouldn't be in their room dinging at 2 a.m."
Overstreet says she is unsure what has caused an uptick in eating disorders. And, she says, it is critical to act when such problems manifest themselves. She told The Nugget that an eating disorder is the most lethal mental health diagnosis for youth, and their families should not wait to get help.
"We know that the earlier we catch this, the less likely it is to develop into a full treatment-resistant eating disorder," she said.
It's also important to recognize that adolescents actually need to go through adversity and tumultuous feelings in order to grow and become fully functioning, resilient adults. Often, the best way to help them is to strategize and develop skills to regulate emotions. That helps a child much more than trying to "fix" a problem for them.
"I think that we're so uncomfortable with negative emotions that we want to 'rescue,'" Overstreet said. "An important part of parenting is letting them feel their feelings and develop skills. We, as a community, need to be a safety net - without rushing to rescue at the first sign of discomfort... Sometimes that looks like coaching and mentoring rather than stepping in and solving problems for them."
Overstreet will talk about these issues at the forum. A panel will kick off the discussion, which is intended to also solicit input from the audience about community needs and strategies to promote well-being. The panel currently includes: Ami Formica of Well Wired, a Bend-based tech advocacy group; long-time school counselor Charlie Kanzig; and Faith Keeton, Sisters High School senior class vice president.
Overstreet said she hopes that people attending and participating in the forum are inspired to recognize that they can have a big, positive impact in others' lives.
"I hope that, as a community, people walk away with a sense of responsibility to look after all of the kids in the community," she said.
"Are The Kids Alright?" is co-sponsored by The Nugget and supported by St. Charles Health System. The forum will be live-streamed and recorded, and light refreshments will be available.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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