Centering Youth Voices: Humanizing Mental Health Through Lived Experience Storytelling

There’s a particular kind of silence that settles in middle and high schools around mental health. Students notice when a classmate disappears for a while, when someone starts eating lunch alone, when a friend jokes a little too often about not wanting to be here. But what they often hear from adults are statistics, warning signs, and policies—not stories. And stigma thrives in that gap between data and lived reality.

In the MRI-funded project Centering Youth Voices: Humanizing Mental Health Through Lived Experience Storytelling, Dr. Stephanie Irby Coard (University of North Carolina Greensboro) is testing a different approach: what happens when adolescents learn about mental health directly from peers who have navigated anxiety, depression, trauma, or other challenges—and are willing to talk about it openly?

The project draws from contact-based anti-stigma theory, which shows that meaningful exposure to people with lived experience can reduce prejudice and increase empathy. But rather than importing adult models into youth spaces, this work adapts the framework developmentally and culturally for ages 14–17. It centers youth as narrators, not subjects. As knowledge-holders, not case studies.

Ten youth storytellers are trained in trauma-informed, developmentally appropriate storytelling practices. The training goes beyond “share your story.” It addresses boundaries, emotional safety, audience readiness, and how to frame experiences in ways that promote connection rather than retraumatization. The emphasis is on agency: what to share, how to share it, and when to hold something back.

These stories are then brought into schools and youth-serving settings through moderated sessions that combine storytelling with structured reflection and facilitated dialogue. The sessions are designed to do more than elicit sympathy; they aim to shift peer norms. When a young person says, in their own words, “This is what anxiety felt like for me—and this is how I got help,” it subtly recalibrates what is sayable, what is survivable, and what support can look like.

Methodologically, the project employs a mixed-methods evaluation with approximately 200 youth audience members. Pre–post surveys assess changes in stigma, empathy, mental health literacy, and help-seeking intentions. But the study does not rely on attitudinal shifts alone. Focus groups and session observations examine how conversations unfold in real time—who speaks, what themes emerge, what resistance surfaces. Interviews with youth presenters explore empowerment, identity development, and the emotional labor of disclosure, ensuring the model supports storytellers as much as audiences.

Particular attention is given to amplifying voices from communities that are often marginalized or misunderstood in mainstream mental health narratives. By doing so, the project addresses not only stigma broadly, but also inequities in whose stories are heard and whose distress is validated.

The long-term aim is sustainability. In collaboration with partners such as NAMI Wake County, the team is working toward a replicable model that schools and youth organizations can adopt, adapt, and maintain. If effective, the intervention offers a scalable, low-cost approach to reshaping peer culture—one where vulnerability is not a liability and seeking help is not a social risk.

At its core, this project treats storytelling as a relational intervention. Not a performance. Not a lesson. A conversation that shifts what feels possible in a room full of teenagers. And sometimes, that shift—small, quiet, human—is where stigma begins to loosen its grip.