Instead of spending her free periods at Urban High School in San Francisco working on homework or chatting with friends, junior Dylan Marchiel hangs out with doctors and professors at UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, assisting with research and getting a glimpse into what it’s like to work in the field of mental health.
Marchiel, who just turned 17, was one of the first participants in Change SF, an unusual paid program run by UCSF and the city of San Francisco that aims to expose San Francisco teens and young adults to mental and behavioral health professions like psychiatry, social work, learning disorders, substance abuse and trauma recovery. She’ll be continuing for a second stint, starting in January and continuing through May.
As one of five participants in the inaugural year of the program, Marchiel was assigned to three mentors with whom she met regularly, sat in on research meetings and assisted with research projects, including helping to tally the number of mental health beds available in the Bay Area (not very many, she found) and how climate affects mental health. She also joined in Zoom calls and meetings with UCSF faculty and staff.
What’s been most surprising, Marchiel said, is that the Change SF participants, despite their age and inexperience, are invited — and encouraged — to be active participants, not merely tolerated or relegated to the fringes.
“There’s a variety of research and they really involve us,” she said. “They take young people’s ideas seriously and let me be involved in a lot of their projects.”
Marina Tolou-Shams, a UCSF professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, was one of Marchield’s mentors.
She said the program is the first of its kind — a joint workforce development effort between the city and the academic community to expose high school students and young adults to careers in mental health and help them expand their knowledge while decreasing the stigma surrounding mental health and addressing mental health needs in underserved communities.
“It is a true city-public university partnership and a model that other cities could emulate,” she said.
The Change SF program is “exceptional,” Tolou-Shams, said, “because young people are in the UCSF work environment, are exposed to all different levels of training and careers in mental health, ranging from research to learning about patient care to learning about mentoring and training, and they do things like write papers and work on presentations, but they may also learn about how to develop campaigns to address mental health.”
One intern in the first year of the program has been hired to work on a research team at UCSF, she said, while two others were hired into other jobs at the campus and Marchiel was invited to serve another year in the program, said Jeff Cretan, a spokesman for Mayor London Breed.
Breed created the program last year in conjunction with her
Opportunities for All effort, which aims to give job opportunities to young people, ages 13 to 24, particularly from low-income families and communities that have historically lacked access to career training in a variety of fields that need an influx of workers, including mental health.
“We’re breaking down barriers to give access to San Francisco youth, bringing in youth who were San Francisco born and raised and would ordinarily be left out,” said Nicole Elmore, coordinator of the programs.
Marchiel, who lives in the Mission, said her interest in mental health was piqued during the pandemic, when its importance to young people became evident.
“Growing up during the pandemic, where mental health became very important, maybe even becoming an epidemic itself, it seems really important to me and something young voices should be involved.”
Marchiel is looking forward to another spin through the Change SF program, where she hopes to get more involved. And while college is still a couple of years off, she’s hoping to study neurological science or behavioral science, then get a Ph.D. or head to medical school.
“Working in that field is very important to me,” she said.
Michael Cabanatuan (he/him) is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
