Marin School Confronts Mental Health Crisis For Teen Girls

NOVATO, CA — Novato High School is readying to confront the mental health crisis affecting teen girls at an upcoming assembly commemorating International Women's Day.

NHS aims to meet the moment March 8 with the presentation of a “Love the Skin You’re In” power assembly, the Novato Unified School District said.

The assembly aims to provide teen girls a lift amid a national mental health crisis, school district officials said. “Love the Skin You’re In” is a project of the Center for Partnership Studies.

Love the Skin You’re In is a nonprofit mental health and resiliency project that inspires young women to think critically about the ways in which the media present bodies, race, sexuality, and self-worth.

CPS founder Brie Mathers will lead the 90-minute assembly, which will be held at Novato High’s new Center for the Arts (625 Arthur Street). The assembly is scheduled to start at 10:45 a.m.

“Young women need to be reminded of their light more than ever,” Mathers said in a statement.

“We all know that social media is having a dramatic impact on girls’ mental health. Now we need to focus on what can fortify them. Mindfulness practice is a life-saving tool that administers to the self-objectification and disembodiment young women experience from the addictive consequences of social media; it opens states of anxiety and depression and connects young women to empathy for themselves and one another.”

Adolescent girls are in a mental health crisis, district officials said, noting a 2022 Centers for Disease Control study that reports teenage girls’ emergency room visits doubled during the pandemic, with doctors reporting more visits from teenage girls struggling with eating and other disorders, anxiety, and depression.

Since 2011, U.S. hospitalization rates for preteen girls reporting self-harmed is up 189 percent and suicides are 151 percent higher for this demographic.

Love the Skin You’re In assemblies are made possible in part by the Girls Resiliency Education Fund (GREF) through a grant by the The Ramesh and Kalpana Bhatia Family Foundation for public schools.

The Girls Resiliency Education Fund was created to directly offer subsidized mental health and resiliency talks and other programs to schools across the nation so that students everywhere can get the help they need.

Mathers is a former high school track champion who recovered from an eating disorder. She founded Love the Skin You’re In to bring feminist consciousness and healing to young women whose journeys are similar to her own.

Mathers spent two years in residency at a zen temple training in mindfulness practice.

Love the Skin You’re In aims to lead girls on a dynamic audiovisual journey from self-objectification, fear, and division to self-compassion, empathy, and unity, according to the CPS.

“We bring critical inquiry to the visibility economy generated by social media and invite participants to reclaim their “inner bandwidth” and choose the conversations they entertain inside their minds,” the CPS said in a statement.