LIGHT: Long Island Girls Hope Together
Long Island Families Together created a girls support and empowerment group based on an identified need on Long Island. Parents and youth expressed a need for a group for girls within the community. One youth who received services in the system of care helped to ideate and facilitate this group for girls with experience in child serving systems. This peer support and empowerment group is a space for girls within the community to come together, support each other, and become empowered to make a difference in other girls’ lives through various forms of advocacy and activism. The group meets biweekly at LIFT’s Amityville location. The group is open to girls age 13-21 and is the only peer support group for girls on Long Island.
Why have your daughter join our girls’ group?
- 75 percent of girls (3 in 4) in juvenile detention have at least one mental health diagnosis.
Source: Teplin, L. Archives of General Psychiatry, Vol. 59, December 2002.
- Nearly 30% (3 in 10) of adolescent girls have been diagnosed with depression.
- Only 20% (1 in 5) receive treatment.
- Over 60% (3 in 5) of adolescent girls sought treatment.
- Girls are almost twice as likely as males to report experiencing a two-week episode of feeling sad or hopeless in the past year.
Source: National Institute of Health
- Girls are almost three times more likely than boys to experience a major depressive episode.
Source: SAMHSA
- More than one-quarter of girls age 12-17 engaged in violent behavior in the past year.
- 1 in 200 girls cut and 70% of girls who self-injure cut.
- Over one half of all teenage girls use unhealthy weight control behavior.
