SAN ANTONIO – When O’Connor High School senior Trinity Irwin sat down for an interview with KSAT, she decided to share something she hadn’t said aloud in a while.
“I didn’t think I was ever going to see graduation. I really wanted to inflict self-harm because I just didn’t see a future. I just felt like there was no way to get out of it,” Irwin said.
As Irwin was in middle school during the COVID-19 pandemic, isolation made her existing mental health issues worse.
“There are different forms of depression. I’m kind of the depression where people don’t think I’m depressed because I throw myself into activities to keep myself busy,” Irwin said.
Irwin is a leader in theater, a member of the O’Connor High School choir, a participant in the National Honor Society, a 2025 Joci Student Reporter and the founder of a school club.
She only felt relief when she joined the Youth Mental Health Council at the Ecumenical Center, where she found children dealing with the same struggles.
“Imagine like a dark room, and you’re sitting alone in it. It kind of finally felt like someone opened the door, and a little light came in,” Irwin said.
Once a month, Irwin meets with children from 13 to 18 to discuss their struggles.
“I think there are so many that truly need to express it because that’s the first step,” Irwin said.
That’s why the Youth Mental Health Council created the We Hear YOUth Summit, bringing dozens of children together to talk openly about internal struggles.
“We plan out the activities that we’re going to do. We give a chance for students to voice how they feel, build connections and really explore their mental health,” Irwin said.
The summit has put the Youth Mental Health Council on the map and created honest conversations surrounding the issues that children and teens face.
“I want them to be interacting with each other and sharing, bouncing ideas off of each other, saying, ‘Oh, they did this at my school, this is why it worked.’ Or, ‘I wish I had this at my school,’” said Quinn Neighbors, who manages the Center for Young Minds within the Ecumenical Center.
Neighbors also oversees the Youth Mental Health Council, where he watches the new generation acknowledge something older generations didn’t.
“I feel like for so long it was categorized as like, ‘OK, physical health is one thing, mental health is another.’ But I think the younger generations are realizing the two are connected.”
The benefit of the Youth Mental Health Council within the Ecumenical Center is that it operates within an organization based on counseling.
“We’re interacting with counselors in their day-to-day, and those are the people I’m talking to, trying to bounce ideas off of how to talk to them,” Neighbors said.
Statistics that the Youth Mental Health Council has gathered show the need for ways to actually let children connect.
“We did a survey at the end of the Mental Health Youth Summit that we had last April, and one of the figures that we have was that only 20% of the kids surveyed said they felt very comfortable talking to even a peer about mental health,” Neighbors said. “I found that kind of shocking because I feel like a lot of times parents and teachers think they’re going to talk to their friends about it. But that’s just not reality.”
Neighbors have watched as the students develop incredible ideas to remedy that.
“I have my own mental health club,” Irwin said. “And we’ve actually built an entire program to implement in schools to have these clubs at our own schools.”
Next, the Youth Mental Health Council has discussed creating friendship benches at elementary schools.
“We get money to build them for students who don’t have friends on the playground. They would go to the friendship bench, and they would have a friend,” Irwin said.
She also talked about a push to bring mental health further into the classroom during periods like health class.
“Really focus on it rather than just being like a day unit and breezing over it. Really going in depth,” Irwin said.
The creation of these ideas is now a legacy that Irwin has passed down to other students as she gets ready to graduate and head to St. Mary’s University for a political science degree.
“I’ve come a long way. I mean, therapy, medication, this council, everything has come together,” she said.
Irwin also wants people to know that her mental health struggles haven’t just disappeared.
“I now have a new issue,” Irwin laughed. “I’ve got that insane anxiety and panic attacks, but I work through it, and I try to use the coping strategies and everything that I’ve learned here.”
She hopes people of every age realize it’s OK to discuss mental health and that there is always a way forward.
“Making it better not only for ourselves, not only for the older generation but for the next generation as well,” she said.
The Youth Mental Health Council is always accepting new members.
Children between 13 and 18 years old meet on Zoom on the first Wednesday of every month at 6 p.m.
Anyone interested can head to the Center for Young Minds website.
