For a few hours every day, Bree Carey steps away from her life as a junior at Geneva High School and into the online community she has created for teenagers struggling with mental illness.
It is her community as well. Carey, 16, has suffered through panic attacks, depression, multiple hospitalizations, and times when she dealt with her pain through cutting herself.
When she emerged from the worst of it, she decided to use her experiences to help other teenagers.
Two years ago she created an online organization, A Cutter’s Guardian Angel, where teenagers can speak openly and anonymously and get advice and support.
The group has 4,000 followers across the country and as far away as Australia, and Carey has three assistants — all teenagers, including her boyfriend, all of whom have also dealt with mental illness.
“We’re stunned that this little idea that I had turned into a pretty big thing,” said Carey, who records her YouTube videos in the bedroom of the Geneva home she shares with her parents, sister and two dogs.
“Part of it’s truly terrifying; but part of it’s amazing.”
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On Sunday, the day after she takes the ACT, Carey will bring the group beyond the virtual community and into her physical one, hosting an event she organized — an open mic on mental illness at the Geneva Public Library.
“She is the first teen that has expressed any interest in creating and running a program here,” said Meredith Anderson, the library’s reference coordinator.
“She’s bringing issues people don’t normally talk about to the forefront and … making a safe place for teens to come forward and talk about these things,” she said. “I’m really impressed by her.”
The online community she created has won support from some mental health workers, including Carey’s own therapist. Other experts, however, expressed concerns.
The website bears a prominent disclaimer that the site is run by kids, not trained psychologists. “This organization is meant to be used along with other treatment, not in place of therapy,” the disclaimer reads.
But some of the postings express desperate pain that seems to cry out for professional help. Several young people have posted messages saying they want to cut or kill themselves.
“It sounds like they’re giving advice to kids who really need a professional, someone with training,” said Dr. Janice Kowalski, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and medical director of adolescent services at Linden Oaks Hospital in Naperville. “I know their intentions are good, but they’re young; they’re not trained.”
While Kowalski praised ACGA’s encouraging and supportive tone, and said online groups are valuable in helping young people who feel isolated, she thinks Carey and her teenage colleagues have taken on a task that could be beyond them.
“When kids are coming to them because they don’t know how to handle their self-injury impulses or their suicidal thoughts — I don’t know how they would handle that,” she said. “Those are tough questions for an adult. … That’s a big responsibility.”
Stephanie Weber, founder and executive director of Batavia-based Suicide Prevention Services of America, worried about the burden on teenagers of running such a group.
“I can see good,” she said, “and I can see danger.”
Carey says the group fills a crucial need, and does so responsibly.
“We disclose very clearly that we are not therapists; we are teenagers; and we shouldn’t be treated as therapists,” she said.
When someone writes of wanting to commit suicide, she or one of her colleagues urges him or her to get in touch by private message.
“What we can do is talk to people, try to get them to calm down and offer what we have, which is a comforting presence and advice on some skills as to how to bring yourself down from such high emotions,” Carey said.
“We encourage them to seek help, but frequently, at the moment where they truly have the intent of (committing suicide), they will not want to seek help,” she said. “We get them to a level where they are willing to seek help.”
The teen-run community has the support of Carey’s therapist.
“Teens find a lot of support in each other, and can relate often better (to them) than to an adult,” said Ann Weller, owner of Plum Tree Psychology in St. Charles.
“I think it’s a very good (idea), as long as there’s a recognition that at some point, the teens need to turn to professionals for support.”
Roger Breisch, a volunteer for 12 years on Suicide Prevention Services’ hotline and an adult participant in the Greater Fox River Valley Operation Snowball, a program for teens, is so impressed by ACGA that he is considering serving on its board if Carey follows through with plans to organize as a nonprofit.
“I take lots of calls on the suicide hotline from people who just want someone to listen with a non-judgmental ear,” he said.
And “anything peer-led is wonderful … especially peer-led by someone like Carey who’s been through so much herself.”
Carey is open about her issues.
She started to get panic attacks in eighth grade — “heart racing, palm sweating, you can’t think about anything other than ‘I’ve got to get out,’ ” she described them. “Honest, it feels like you’re dying.”
A straight-A student who sang in the school choir, she became too terrified to go to school. She got some relief at a day program at a psychiatric hospital, she said, but back in school was again beset by anxiety and, now, deep depression.
She started cutting herself in an attempt to ease the pain and began going in and out of hospitals and cycling through various combinations of medications. Then one night she was Skyping with her boyfriend, sobbing and trying to find something to cut herself with and telling him that she needed to do it.
“Then he said the words that really cut through to me. He told me, you can’t break free until you realize it’s a want, not a need,” she said. “It hit me; I wasn’t forced into feeling sad. I wasn’t drowning; I was swimming toward the bottom of the ocean. I wasn’t tied to the stake and burning; I was holding on to it.
“And I decided that I would let go.”
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Three months after committing to recovery, she started A Cutter’s Guardian Angel.
Carey’s mother, Kathy Carey, a middle school teacher, has been helping her daughter put up posters for Sunday’s event.
“I’m so proud that she thought of this idea and that she has the drive and resolution to make it happen,” she said.
And it has helped solidify her daughter’s recovery, Kathy Carey said.
“This has been really positive for Brianna to feel she has something to offer,” she said. “Helping people makes you feel good about yourself.”
“I’ve spoken to people all over the world,” Bree Carey said. “Everyone has different problems; everyone thinks a different way.
“But it all comes down to the same human emotions, the same need for someone who understands and can say, ‘I’m listening. I care about you.’ Which is one of the biggest things we do.
“We listen; we care.”
Bree Carey will lead Words of Hope, an open mic on mental illness, at 2 p.m. at the Geneva Public Library. Information is at gpld.org.