Teens step up to help youth mental health

Teen Line, an L.A.-based nonprofit project, aims to fill the gap from federal cuts.

- BY CORINNE PURTILL

JULIANA YAMADA Los Angeles Times VOLUNTEER Sydney holds a stuffed bunny. Teen Line is part of Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services.

There are a lot of reasons why people reach out to Teen Line, a Century City-based hotline that connects young people in crisis to trained teenage volunteers.

They call because someone is hurting them or they are afraid of hurting themselves. They text because an important relationship has ended or a troubling conflict has started. They feel disrespected, disregarded, dismissed.

At the heart of almost every call, text or email is the same cry of pain: Nobody is listening.

So the teenagers on the receiving end do what they wish adults would make time for more often, the thing nobody seems to be doing enough of these days: They listen.

Almost every single time, for at least the length of a call or a chat session, it's enough.

"Even if their situation is really difficult, the best that we can do at the start is always just to listen," said volunteer Mendez, 18. (The volunteers' full names are withheld to protect their privacy and anonymity.) "And even if we don't have a solution for them, I feel like that is one thing that just helps them so much."

A project of the Los Angeles-based nonprofit Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services, Teen Line is helping to fill an ever-widening gap between the need for mental health support and the resources available.

JULIANA YAMADA Los Angeles Times TEEN LINE volunteer Mendez, center, puts on her headset while surrounded by other volunteers in L.A.

The phone and text lines are available to youths throughout the U.S. and Canada, and the email address can be used by teens anywhere in the world. Volunteers fielded 8,886 calls, texts and emails in 2024, Managers expect the total will surpass 10,000 this year.