Text For Help System Aimed At Teens Expanding In Lake County
CHICAGO (CBS) -- An anonymous text-a-tip program to help young people in the northern suburbs is expanding.
The organization LEAD, or Linking Efforts Against Drugs, started its text-a-tip program a year and a half ago in Lake Forest and Lake Bluff, after a series of teenage suicides. Now it is expanding to all of Lake County.
All a teen -- or anyone else -- needs to do is text anonymously, and a clinical person will respond to try to deal with the immediate situation, and point a troubled person toward long-term help.
"Any issue; whether somebody's experiencing bullying, problems at home, mental health issues, substance abuse issues -- again, whether for themselves or somebody else," Lake County State's Attorney Michael Nerheim said.
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Lake County taxpayers will pick up the $27,000 cost of the program this year. After that, LEAD will need to find private funding for it.
To text-a-tip, type LAKECO in a text and send it to 274637.
LEAD executive director Andy Duran says that during the program's first year and a half in a limited area, hundreds of different people sent thousands of different texts.
He says young people have texted in everything from problems with a relationship to thoughts of suicide.
