COLUMBUS, Ohio — The Franklin County Juvenile Intervention Center has a new mental health program for teens in the facility.
The five-week program, Inner Words: Empowering Youth Through School-Based Mental Health Conversations, is led by psychiatrist Dr. Russell Ledet. It’s the first time the facility has had a structured mental health program.
Franklin County Domestic Relations and Juvenile Court Lead Judge Lasheyl Stroud said the program is one solution to help teens make better and safer decisions for themselves and their communities.
“I think they can change because I’ve seen them change,” Dr. Ledet said. “Some of these kids have been in this room right before they were getting ready to go to court.”
At the start of each session, the teens create community rules to set the foundation for their futures.
The rules include grace to mess up, grace to apologize, a promise to offer amnesty, use put-ups and not put-downs, and respect one another’s opinions.
“I think we make an assumption that someone has taught these kids to think deeper, and I’m not going to make that assumption,” said Dr. Ledet. “I’m going to teach them to think deeper.”
About 20 teens ages 14 through 18 participate in each session. They meet with Dr. Ledet every weekend for five weeks. There have been two sessions so far. Mid-January, the facility had 95 teens in its care.
“It’s really about helping them to understand how do we stop that cycle? Because for some of these kids, it’s been their parents and then their siblings,” he said. “So they’ve seen this a lot of times their whole life. How do we stop that? First of all, we got to dig into the mind. We got to think about how do you make decisions.”
The teens involved face charges from murder to felony assault. Program organizers said the participants are chosen based on their length of stay at the facility and their ability to safely be in the same room as other participants they may know.
“We have youth in here who have already been bound over to adult court, said Judge Stroud. “We have youth in here who have pending bindovers, and then we have youth in here who have other higher offenses to where they have assessments that say that they are high risk.”
The Franklin County Juvenile Intervention Center hosted its first session of the program in September and its second in October in 2024.
“We had a young girl who stood right here in a session, and she said, ‘I used to fight other people because I had an issue with someone, but now I’m thinking, why do I do that? I don’t want, there’s no need for me to fight anyone anymore,'” Stroud said.
“You could feel anger,” said Dr. Ledet. “Anger is okay. It’s a normal emotion for you to have. But how do you respond to it? Do you go and do something recklessly? Do you evaluate the people that are around you? Do you do things that are not in line with what’s generally done in your community in order to save yourself or to be healthy? And can you do that bravely?”
In 2024, 19 teens between the ages of 13 and 17 were homicide suspects, according to CPD. In 2023, CPD reported 22 homicide suspects in the same age range. Twenty-two teens between the ages of 13 and 17 were also homicide suspects in 2022.
A question often asked after a teen-involved violent crime in Columbus – whose responsibility is it to make our neighborhoods safer? Dr. Ledet shared the following response.
“This assumption that all of the parents are in a great condition to really address the issues of their child is wild,” he said. “We know that more often than not, a lot of these kids here come from low socioeconomic environments, right? They don’t have access to healthy foods. They don’t have access to great education. They don’t have access to safe environments. And so what do you think is the result of that?”
Judge Stroud said witnessing multiple sessions gives her hope for safer communities.
“It absolutely gives me hope for the future,” said Judge Stroud. “That’s why I’m here. Because I have hope for our future, hope for our community, and hope for the youth. That’s why I’m a juvenile court judge, because the whole purpose, the premise of juvenile court is to rehabilitate. So we have to have hope.”
The Inner Words Program costs about $50,000 per session. Judge Stroud said a grant funded the first session, and the Department of Youth Services covered the second session.
She plans to continue the program and eventually work to include the teen’s families in some way.
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